Identification of Equivalent Circuit of Transformer Insulation Parameters Assisted by Constrained GA&PSO Algorithms

Power transformer is a very valuable device of electrical transmission and distribution networks. The life of a power transformer mainly depends on the insulation system conditions. A non-destructive method used for monitoring this system is the Recovery Voltage Measurement (RVM), which allows estimating the polarization spectrum. Mathematical models of this spectrum are used to better understand the physical insulation properties in response to moisture and aging. These models are often used to identify the equivalent circuit of the insulation system. The parameters estimation of this circuit can be performed in different stages of the life of the transformer by RVM measured results. In this paper, the authors present two constrained optimization methods based on the heuristic algorithms GA and PSO to solve the parameter estimation problem. The performances of the two different approaches are compared.