Deep Residual Shrinkage Network Recognition Method for Transformer Partial Discharge

Partial discharge (PD) is not only a critical indicator but also a major accelerating factor of insulation degradation in power transformers. Accurate identification of PD types is essential for diagnosing insulation defects and locating faults in transformers. Traditional methods based on phase-resolved partial discharge (PRPD) patterns typically rely on expert interpretation and manual feature extraction, which are increasingly being supplanted by Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) due to their ability to automatically extract features and deliver high classification accuracy. However, the inherent subtlety and diversity of characteristic differences among PRPD patterns, coupled with substantial noise resulting from complex electromagnetic interference, present significant hurdles to achieving accurate identification. This paper proposes a transformer partial discharge identification method based on Deep Residual Shrinkage Network (DRSN) to address these challenges. The method integrates dual-path feature extraction to capture both local and global features, incorporates a channel-domain adaptive soft-thresholding mechanism to effectively suppress noise interference, and utilizes the Focal Loss function to enhance the model’s attention to hard-to-classify samples. To validate the proposed method, given the scarcity of diverse real-world transformer PD data, an experimental platform was utilized to generate and collect PD data by artificially simulating various discharge defect models, including tip discharge, surface discharge, air-gap discharge and floating discharge. Data diversity was then enhanced through sample augmentation and noise simulation, to minimize the gap between experimental data and real-world on-site data. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves superior partial discharge recognition accuracy and strong noise robustness on the experimental dataset. For future work, it is essential to collect more real transformer PD data to further validate and strengthen the model’s generalization capability, thereby ensuring its robust performance and applicability in practical scenarios.