Prediction of incipient faults in underground power cables utilizing S-transform and support vector regression

Incipient faults usually emerge from partial discharges which eventually cause insulation degradation between two insulated cable cores. Early detection of incipient faults is of particular importance because insulation defects caused by incipient faults may lead to permanent faults in underground distribution networks. This paper presents a novel approach using S-transform and support vector regression to predict the occurrence of incipient faults in underground cable networks. The results of this study proved that the new approach is capable to predict the existence of partial discharges in underground power cable systems in Malaysia.