Vibration signal analysis for condition monitoring of puffer‐type high‐voltage circuit breakers using wavelet transform

Nowadays, the goals of electrical supply utilities are to reduce equipment failures, extend service life, increase equipment reliability, and reduce their related operating and maintenance costs. The high‐voltage circuit breaker is an important element in the electrical network. In order to determine or to detect abnormal conditions inside a circuit breaker, powerful vibration analytical techniques have been proposed. In this paper, a vibrational analysis is carried out by analyzing the signal in the time–frequency domain under no‐load switching operations with a commercially available high‐voltage puffer‐type circuit breaker without opening its major parts. Vibration of the circuit breaker poles, operating mechanism, and various monitored parameters were recorded under normal and variable operating conditions. Moreover, a synthetic mechanical damage introduced deliberately is also investigated. The experimental result indicates that mechanical defects can be detected by analyzing the vibration signal. © 2011 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.