Developing a new transformer fault diagnosis system through evolutionary fuzzy logic

To improve the diagnosis accuracy of the conventional dissolved gas analysis (DGA) approaches, this paper proposes an evolutionary programming (EP) based fuzzy system development technique to identify the incipient faults of the power transformers. Using the IEC/IEEE DGA criteria as references, a preliminary framework of the fuzzy diagnosis system is first built. Based on previous dissolved gas test records and their actual fault types, the proposed EP-based development technique is then employed to automatically modify the fuzzy if-then rules and simultaneously adjust the corresponding membership functions. In comparison to results of the conventional DGA and the artificial neural networks (ANN) classification methods, the proposed method has been verified to possess superior performance both in developing the diagnosis system and in identifying the practical transformer fault cases.