Novel lossy compression method of noisy time series data with anomalies: Application to partial discharge monitoring in overhead power lines

Abstract

In overhead power transmission lines, particularly in regions like natural parks where establishing a safe zone is difficult, the adoption of cross-linked polyethylene insulated covered conductors (CCs) helps prevent outages due to vegetation contact. However, these CCs are susceptible to partial discharge (PD) activity, which can degrade insulation and lead to system failures. Detecting and analyzing PD are essential for maintaining power system reliability and safety. A key challenge in PD monitoring is transmitting the large volumes of PD signal data over unreliable 2G networks, as existing compression methods either compromise on data integrity or are ineffective. This paper introduces a novel lossy compression technique utilizing an autoencoder with skip connections and correction data to address this issue. Unlike previous algorithms that struggle with noisy time series data and fail to preserve crucial anomaly information, our method reconstructs the signal without anomalies, which are subsequently restored using correction data. Achieving a compression factor of about 25 (reducing data to 4.1% of its original size), this approach maintains essential PD signal features for analysis. The effectiveness of our method is validated by three classification algorithms, showing promise for future fault detection, diagnosis, and memory space reduction. This innovative compression solution marks a significant advancement in PD data processing, offering a balanced trade-off between compression efficiency and data fidelity, and paving the way for enhanced remote monitoring in power transmission systems.