The Potential Use of Optical Sensors for the Measurement of Electric Field Distribution

An optical sensor using the Pockels effect can be a useful measurement tool in electrical applications where mapping distributed E-fields is required. In this paper, results from E-field tests with a 2 m sphere and the voltage distribution of an 1100 kV cascaded test transformer are presented to demonstrate its utility. These results show that the optical sensor, owing to its inherent dielectric link to the data acquisition electronics can be employed as a research tool in the measurement of the voltage distribution on high voltage insulation systems.