Evaluation of Roebel bars aged under service conditions in large hydrogenerators

The evaluation of high-voltage groundwall insulation aged under long-term operating conditions is addressed using three sets of Roebel bars removed from large hydrogenerators after several decades of service. To cover an important cross-section of the possible operating regimes for typical hydros, the units involved in the study were selected to represent (i) the air-cooled Pumped-storage, (ii) the air-cooled base-load and (iii) the water-cooled base-load service regimes. Experimental techniques were used to permit assessment of the insulation condition under visual, electrical and morphological aspects. Contrary to what is usually assumed, the results suggest that the pumped-storage operating regime, with its repeated thermal-mechanical cycles of start-stops may create only minimum aging to the groundwall insulation while, in some particular cases, units operating at relatively low temperatures and under mild base-load conditions, may be found to exhibit a more severe insulation degradation in the long run.