A cognitive system for fault prognosis in power transformers

The power transformer is one of the most critical and expensive equipments in an electric power system. If it is out of service in an unexpected way, the damage for both society and electric utilities is very significant. Over the last decades, many computational tools have been developed to monitor the 'health' of such an important equipment. The classification of incipient faults in power transformers via Dissolved Gas Analysis (DGA) is, for instance, a very well known technique for this purpose. In this paper we present an intelligent system based on cognitive systems for fault prognosis in power transformers. The proposed system combines both evolutionary and connectionist mechanisms into a hybrid model that can be an essential tool in the development of a predictive maintenance technology, to anticipate when any equipment fault might occur and to prevent or reduce unplanned reactive maintenance. The proposed procedure has been applied to real databases derived from chromatographic tests of power transformers found in the literature. The obtained results are fully described showing the feasibility and validity of the new methodology. The proposed system can help Transformer Predictive Maintenance programmes offering a low cost and highly flexible solution for fault prognosis. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.