Diagnosis of XLPE Cable using the Recovery Voltage Measurement Method

This paper presents a preliminary investigation on the evaluation of ageing in 11 kV XLPE cable using return voltage measurement (RVM) method. Accelerated ageing using AC voltage was performed on new XLPE cable samples. Within the period of ageing, the state of insulation was investigated and assessed. The result of the diagnosis using the RVM showed a good correlation between aging time and the return voltage initial slopes (dU_,/dt) of the aged XLPE cables, indicating the samples have undergone thermal ageing. The RVM technique, which was initially proposed for diagnosis of oil-paper insulation systems, was found to be able to detect ageing in XLPE cables, and thus insulation diagnosis using this technique could be extended to extruded-polymeric insulation systems.