Study on the Validity of SiPM for Partial Discharge Detection in Power Equipment

Partial discharge (PD) not only indicates insulation deterioration in power equipment but also induces further decay on the properties of insulation materials. Limited to the development of photoelectrical devices, especially for silicon photomultiplier (SiPM), optical PD detection methods are seldom used in the on-site environment. In recent years, the solid-state photosensitive semiconductor has made great progress which provides a potential for SiPM in PD detection inside power equipment. However, the properties for SiPM-based PD detection in power equipment also remain elusive, and on-site applied methods for SiPM still need to be studied. In this paper, in order to verification the PD detection efficiency of SiPM, A system which can use SiPM and PMT to detect PD synchronously was built. The results show that the PRPD patterns of the SiPM-based detection are considerably consistent with that of PMT detections. What's more, the skewness and kurtosis calculated based on PRPD of SiPM-based detection are also consistent with that of PMT detections, which provides a potential for transferring traditional statistical analysis methods into SiPM-based PD detection.