Diagnosing faults in power transformers with autoassociative neural networks and mean shift.

Abstract

This paper presents a new approach to incipient fault diagnosis in power transformers, based on the results of dissolved gas analysis. A set of autoassociative neural networks or autoencoders are trained, so that each becomes tuned with a particular fault mode or no fault condition. The scarce data available forms clusters that are densified using an Information Theoretic Mean Shift algorithm, so that training becomes efficient. Then, a parallel model is built where the autoencoders compete with one another when a new input vector is entered and the closest recognition is taken as the diagnosis sought. A remarkable accuracy of 100% is achieved with this architecture, in a validation data set using all real information available.