ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Energy Res.
Sec. Smart Grids
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenrg.2025.1650577
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvances in Electromagnetic Device Design, Optimization, and Control for Enhanced EfficiencyView all articles
Research on Transformer Early Fault Diagnosis Based on Fiber - optic Leakage Magnetic Field Measurement
Provisionally accepted
- 1Wudongde Hydropower Plant, China Yangtze Power Company, Kunming, China
- 2Shanghai University of Electric Power, Shanghai, China
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When a severe fault occurs within a transformer, the fault current escalates rapidly, making it challenging for differential protection systems to promptly isolate the faulty transformer. This delay can lead to catastrophic accidents, such as explosive combustion. To address this issue, this study proposes a novel differential protection device based on leakage magnetic field characteristics. The device accurately detects transformer winding deformation, arc-type faults, and inter-turn faults during the early stages of transformer faults, thereby preventing severe accidents. By analyzing several early transformer fault cases, this study proposes leveraging the symmetry characteristics of the leakage magnetic field to identify early faults. A fiber-optic sensor, utilizing the Faraday magneto-optical effect, is developed to measure leakage magnetic field characteristics. Based on this, a differential protection scheme incorporating steady-state and transient leakage magnetic field quantities is proposed to identify winding deformation and inter-turn faults. A prototype of the protection device has been developed, successfully passing static and dynamic simulation tests, and is slated for deployment in field operations.
Keywords: Transformer Protection1, Transformer Early Faults2, Leakage Magnetic Field3, Field Test4, magnetic sensing5
Received: 23 Jun 2025; Accepted: 01 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Tong, Zhang, Liu, Deng and Tu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xiangli Deng, Shanghai University of Electric Power, Shanghai, China
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