STATOR INSULATION PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED WITH LOW VOLTAGE AND MEDIUM VOLTAGE PWM DRIVES

(FIEEE) Iris Power LP. 1 Westside Drive, Unit 2, Toronto, ON, M9C 1B2 Canada

G.C. Stone

(MIEEE) Iris Power LP. 1 Westside Drive, Unit 2, Toronto, ON, M9C 1B2 Canada

I. M. Culbert

(SMIEEE) Iris Power LP. 1 Westside Drive, Unit 2, Toronto, ON, M9C 1B2 Canada

B.A. Lloyd

Abstract - About 15 years ago, the short risetime pulses caused by voltage source, pulse width modulated converters were first recognized as a cause of stator winding insulation failure in low voltage motors. The root cause was found to be the large number of PWM voltage pulses from the drive, which caused partial discharges between turns in the stator. These discharges eventually eroded the magnet wire insulation, resulting in failure. Since the first reports of failures, motor manufacturers have developed many ways to eliminate or slow down this process. Medium voltage motors rated up to 7200 V and driven by pulse width modulated, voltage-source converters are now being introduced. Although relatively rare to date, such systems are expected to play a larger role in cement plants in the future. Early experience with 4160 volt motors driven by such converters again shows that the voltage pulses from the drives may also adversely affect the stator insulation. However, it seems that different aging processes tend to occur in medium voltage stators compared to those in low voltage motors. In particular, the aging can be accelerated as a result of dielectric heating of the groundwall insulation caused by the high frequency components of the drive voltage. In addition, the voltage stress control coatings often used in medium voltage motors have much higher capacitive currents flowing in them when driven by converters leading to more rapid thermal destruction of the coatings. The processes involve are described. The paper also reviews the development of new IEC standards that for the first time will define the stator insulation requirements in a converter duty motor.

INTRODUCTION
Over the past decade, voltage source converters of the pulse width modulation (PWM) type have become pervasive in motors rated 690 V, and are now being applied to medium voltage drives. The primary reasons for the rapid acceptance of such variable speed technology has been the energy savings associated with running a motor at a lower speed when feasible, as well as the general reliability of such drive systems. However a number of issues have arisen as a result of their introduction. One of these issues concerns the effect of repetitive fast risetime voltage surges created by voltage source PWM converters. Such voltage surges may lead to additional voltage and thermal stresses on the stator winding insulation system and as a result, could lead to premature stator winding failure. In this paper, the reasons for the additional stress on the stator insulation are described in some detail, as well as the faster aging processes that result. Since the stresses and deterioration processes are quite different for random wound (usually 690 V) and form wound (usually >2300 V) stators, these two types of stators will be discussed separately. Finally, the efforts by standards organizations to develop tests that can assure end-users that stator windings can resist premature failure due to converters are described.

RANDOM WOUND INSULATION SYSTEM AND FAILURE PROCESS

Figure 1 shows the schematic of the stator winding turn, ground and phase-phase insulation components for a low voltage, 3 phase stator winding. In a conventional 60 Hz motors rated up to 575 V, the phase-phase insulation must withstand 575 Vrms, whereas the ground insulation must withstand 332 Vrms. The max turn insulation voltage stress is hard to calculate, since any turn may be adjacent to any another turn so in principle the worse voltage stress across two layers of turn insulation could be 575 V. In well-made new stators, these 60 Hz voltages are low enough that voltage does not cause any aging or deterioration of the insulation by itself. In contrast with 60 Hz sinusoidal operation, PWM voltage source converters may cause voltage aging, as first recognized by Persson [2]. PWM converters using insulated gate bipolar junction transistors (IGBTs) or similar

1079-9931/07/$25.00 2007 IEEE

switching devices create relatively high magnitude, short rise time voltage impulses at the motor terminals. Depending on the cable length, cable grounding, whether converter output filters are used and the relative surge impedance of the cable and the stator winding, the impulse voltages may be as much as 3 or 4 times the rated RMS phase-to-ground voltage, with a rise time as short as 100 ns [1, 3]. Impulses with such short risetimes create Fourier frequencies as high as 5 MHz. This high frequency results in a non-uniform distribution of the impulse voltage across the winding components [1, 3, 12]. Specifically, the voltage between turns in the first coil may be 50% the applied impulse voltage if the risetime is as short as 100 ns. The shorter the impulse rise time, the greater is the nonuniformity, and thus the higher the turn-to-turn voltage stress. The severity of the PWM impulses increases as either the magnitude increases or the rise time decreases. There are often small air gaps between turns, between turn and ground, and between phases in random wound stators. The high voltage impulses, although brief, can cause the electrical stress in these small air gaps to exceed the electric breakdown strength of air (about 3 kV/mm for uniform fields). The result is a partial discharge (PD) a small electric spark. Repetitive PD will eventually erode organic insulation such as the insulation film on the magnet wire, or even the ground and phase insulation barriers. If PD occurs as a result of impulses from a converter in a stator winding not designed to withstand such discharges, the insulation will eventually fail [1-3]. This PD problem is now well known, and motor manufacturers have largely mitigated the problem with the introduction of insulation materials that are resistant to PD, by increasing insulation thickness and/or by improving resin impregnation processes.

1 2
c

b a

1
Figure 1: Crossection of a random wound stator, showing the insulation system components: ground and phase insulation (a) and magnet wire film insulation that serves as the turn insulation (c) [1].

FORM WOUND COIL INSULATION SYSTEMS

Figure 2 shows a diagram of form wound coils in a stator slot. The insulation system is somewhat more complicated than for random wound stators, and consists of: Strand insulation to improve the efficiency of the motor by reducing eddy and skin effect losses. This insulation is typically a film coating on the magnet wire, and/or a Dacron and glass serving. Turn insulation to isolate each copper turn from each other. In modern motors the turn insulation is usually a Dacron and glass composite or mica paper (mica particles on a film or Dacron and glass backing tape). Sometimes the strand and turn insulation is combined to fulfill both functions. Groundwall insulation to separate the copper conductors from the grounded stator core. At the phase end of the winding, the groundwall insulation experiences the full phase to ground applied voltage. Almost all modern motor stators use mica paper tapes bonded together with epoxy as the groundwall insulation. These materials are almost always combined using the global vacuum pressure impregnation (GVPI) process. A partly conductive paint or tape over the surface of the groundwall insulation, in the stator slot area. This layer is referred to by a large number of (sometimes contradictory) names, but will be referred to here as the slot conductive coating. This coating prevents partial discharge (PD) that could occur in any air gap that will

inevitably occur between the surface of the groundwall insulation and the side of the slot in the stator [3]. This coating is usually a carbon-loaded tape. Most motor manufacturers tend to apply this coating on converter duty motors rated 3 kV and above. A stress relief paint or tape that overlaps the slot conductive coating just outside of the slot, and extends for 1015 cm into the endwinding. The purpose of this coating is to linearize the electric stress along the surface of the coil, at the end of the slot conductive coating, to reduce the risk of PD. Presently, this coating is most commonly a silicon carbide powder within a tape, although other materials are under development. The stress relief coating is most often applied to converter duty motors rated 6 kV and above.

There is usually no additional phase-to-phase insulation in a form wound stator since there are already two thickness of ground insulation present between phases (see Figure 2).

1
d b e

3
c

Figure 2: Cutaway diagram showing the form-wound coil insulation components as the coils exits the stator core [1]. The strand (and often turn) insulation is c, the ground insulation is 2, d shows the locations of the slot conductive coating and e is the stress relief coating.

FORM WOUND STATOR INSULATION FAILURE PROCESSES

End-of-life in a conventional form wound motor stator is most often the result of either deterioration due to long term thermal aging, or from the effects of contamination leading to electrical tracking [3, 4]. Thermal aging in conventional motors arises due to the heat mainly created by copper losses and core losses. The operating temperature depends on the load and the effectiveness of the cooling system (motors operating at less than synchronous speed often require additional cooling measures to compensate for significantly reduced cooling air flow from shaft mounted fans). If the stator winding temperature is high enough (which depends on the thermal class of the insulation), then chemical reactions (mainly oxidation) take place that gradually reduce the electrical and mechanical properties of the epoxy bonding material. Some of the epoxy evaporates and loses the ability to bond the mica paper tape layers and the higher the temperature, the faster this occurs. The result is that the copper strands and turns are eventually free to vibrate under the 120 Hz magnetic forces, leading to strand and turn insulation abrasion and ultimately shorts. In addition, especially in motors 3.3 kV and above, the voids due to the insulation delamination enable partial discharges to occur which can also rapidly degrade the insulation. Contamination, in addition to reducing heat transfer, can also lead to electrical tracking failure. Most contamination tends to be partly conductive (in the megohm range). This leads to small AC currents flowing over coil surfaces at different potential. At dry (high resistance) spots, breakdown of the air occurs. The resulting discharge decomposes the insulation creating a carbon track. Over months or years the tracking can lead to phase to ground or phase-tophase faults. These two common stator winding failure processes can certainly still occur in PWM converter driven motors. But the presence of switching transients from converters can cause some additional failure processes. Modern medium voltage drives may produce thousands of short risetime pulses per second [3,5]. The short risetime creates frequencies up to a few megahertz. In addition, as with low voltage drives, the transmission line effects can increase the magnitude of the voltage beyond the step created by switching a DC voltage. The repetitive, short risetime

voltage surges result in a more complicated impact on the insulation system, than occurs in random wound stators. The resulting additional failure processes are discussed in terms of the insulation system components.

Turn Insulation PD
As discussed for random wound stators, the repetitive, short risetime voltage impulses may cause a high percentage of the voltage step at the motor terminals to appear between the turns in the first coil. If there are any small voids adjacent to the turn insulation, which is often inevitable even with the best global VPI processing, then partial discharges may result. The electron and ion bombardment of the insulation by the PD will gradually erode the insulation. Modern mica paper turn insulation is one of the most PD-resistant materials ever developed but even this material will gradually puncture if the PD magnitude is high enough and enough PD pulses occur over time. If less resistant materials such as Dacron and glass are used as the turn insulation, failure may follow relatively rapidly. Once puncture of the turn insulation occurs, a large current will flow around the affected turn, which will rapidly melt the copper and groundwall insulation in the vicinity of the original puncture. A ground fault will soon occur. Thus the design of the turn insulation must be evaluated to determine how it resists this failure process. How significant this failure process is depends on the risetime of the voltage steps (the shorter, the more likely the process), the magnitude of the steps (which in turn depends on the DC bus voltage and the number of levels in the converter) and the switching frequency of the converter (the higher the frequency, the greater the number of PD pulses will occur per second, and thus the faster the aging rate).

Groundwall Insulation Heating

The voltage waveform from a PWM converter can lead to increased groundwall insulation heating, which can increase the winding temperature and thus accelerate the normal thermal aging processes described above. The epoxy mica insulation material has a property called dielectric loss or dissipation factor [3,6,7]. Ideally the insulation acts as a pure capacitance, and when a voltage is applied, there is no power loss and thus no self-heating of the insulation. However real materials such as epoxy mica contain polar molecule groups that tend to respond (move) when a changing electric field is placed across them. This vibrational motion of the molecules causes heating of the material. For epoxy mica, about 0.5% of the 60 Hz capacitive current in the insulation goes to molecular losses that cause heating. This is termed the dissipation factor (which is essentially the same as the power factor). The loss is often electrically modeled as an ideal (lossless) capacitor in parallel with a resistor [7]. In a conventional motor, this dielectric loss is very minor compared to the copper and core losses. However, if the frequency of the applied voltage increases, as is the case in a PWM converter, then the capacitive current through the resistor in the electrical model will increase, increasing the power consumed within the dielectric and thus increasing the temperature of the insulation [7]. As the PWM switching frequency increases, the power consumed increases linearly and so does the winding temperature. This is made worse since the dissipation factor itself often increases with temperature and frequency. Consequently PWM converters will cause the stator winding temperature to be higher than for a conventional motor, all other things being equal, and therefore thermally age the insulation faster. The current generation of medium voltage drives (with frequencies up to 2 kHz and DC bus voltages of about 1000 V) does not seem to produce significant increases in temperature in the groundwall due to dielectric heating but this could change as the switching frequency and the magnitude of the voltage steps increase.

Groundwall Insulation PD
All conventional stator windings rated 3.3 kV and above may have PD within the groundwall, if voids of sufficient size are present. The voids may be from poor manufacturing, or occur over time as a result of delamination due to thermal aging. Similarly, PD may occur as a result of the voltage surges from converter drives. But the PD may be larger and more frequent with a converter, because the peak voltages are usually higher than the peak voltage from a sinusoidal supply. The peak-to-peak voltage can be higher than from a 50/60 Hz supply due to the transmission line effects that may cause the step voltage changes that occur with converters to possibly double. The peak to peak voltage in a drive system will be worse if fewer stages are used in the converter (thus a greater jump voltage occurs), the voltage risetime is shorter, and/or the power cable between the converter and the motor is longer. The rate of aging is primarily determined by the fundamental frequency of the converter.

PD Suppression Coating Degradation

The partly conductive coatings that normally cover the coil insulation in the stator slot and the silicon carbide material at the slot exits are intended to suppress the probability of PD occurring on the coil surface in the slot and just outside

of it. Several studies have shown that under PWM voltage, these coatings will operate at higher temperatures and thus increase the rate of thermal aging, if they are not properly designed [5,8,9]. Since PWM voltage waveforms contain voltages at high frequencies (from the risetime of the voltage steps and the PWM switching rate), higher capacitive currents flow through the groundwall and then through the PD suppression coatings. These higher 2 currents create higher I R losses in the coatings than would occur under 60 Hz operation - increasing the operating temperature of the coatings. The effect is exacerbated because the higher frequencies also cause the silicon carbide materials to be less effective in linearizing the voltage along the surface of the coils which tends to concentrate the heating to a shorter area [8]. The net result is that an inadequately designed stress relief system may create a temperature rise as much as 50 C above that which would occur with a 60 Hz sinusoidal voltage [5,8,9]. This local heating of the coatings will accelerate the thermal aging of both the coatings, and the adjacent groundwall insulation. When the coatings degrade, surface PD may be extensive, creating lots of ozone gas [3]. In the medium voltage converter fed motors in operation to date this is the problem that has created the greatest concern about the service life of the stator insulation.

STANDARDS RELATED ACTIVITY

The new demands on the stator insulation systems are starting to be recognized by standards organizations. NEMA MG1 part 31 was added to indicate that converter duty motors should be surge tested (using the procedure in IEEE 522) to a higher voltage level than conventional motors. However, aside from this, North American standards organizations such as NEMA and IEEE have been silent. In contrast, the IEC has expended considerable effort in the past 5 years to develop new technical specifications for the insulation systems of converter driven motors. In 2006, a new technical specification was approved for low voltage stator insulation systems [1]. This extensive document describes the tests motor manufacturers must do to qualify stator winding insulation systems for use with PWM converters. Since for low voltage stators the only key issue relates to PD, the approach taken by IEC is to ensure that PD will never occur below a specified surge voltage during the expected life of the winding [1,10]. In addition, an acceptance test is defined. This is a PD test on a normal production stator, and the partial discharges should not occur below a specified voltage. For example, a 460 V motor intended for use in the most extreme type of surge environment should have a partial discharge inception voltage higher than 2800 V [10]. A similar technical specification for form wound stators is still being developed by IEC. Due to the more complicated impact of the converter surges on medium voltage stators, a series of qualification tests for each component of the insulation system has been proposed [11]. The details of the testing are still in transition and the new technical specification for medium voltage converter driven motors is not expected until 2008.

CONCLUSION
Voltage source converters can create thousands of short risetime voltage surges per second. These surges may lead to more rapid aging of the insulation in stator windings than would occur under sinusoidal voltage. In random wound stators, the impact is that partial discharges can occur that may gradually erode the insulation, leading to a ground fault. In medium voltage machines, the converter surges will also increase the stator winding temperature both due to dielectric heating of the groundwall insulation, as well as due to heating of the stress control coatings. In addition, the surges may cause an increase in PD activity, both between turns, and within the groundwall. The IEC is developing technical specifications to enable motor manufacturers to evaluate the ability of various system insulation system designs to withstand these additional deterioration processes.

References
1. 2. 3. IEC 60034-18-41, Evaluation and Qualification of Electrical Insulation Systems Used in Rotating Electrical Machines When Fed from Voltage Converters. E. Persson, Transient Effects in Applications of PWM Inverters to Induction Motors, IEEE Trans IAS, Sept 1992, pp 1095-1101 G.C. Stone, et al, Electrical Insulation for Rotating Machines Design, Evaluation, Aging, Testing and Repair, Wiley IEEE Press, 2004

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

A. Bonnett et al, Cause And Analysis Of Stator And Rotor Failures In Three-Phase Squirrel-Cage Induction Motors, IEEE Trans IAS, July 1992, pp 921-937 J.C.G Wheeler, Effects of Converter Pulses on the Electrical Insulation in Low and Medium Voltage Motors, IEEE Electrical Insulation Magazine, March 2005, pp22-29 IEEE Standard 286-2000, Recommended Practice for Measurement of Power Factor Tip-Up of Electric Machinery Stator Coil Insulation R. Bartnikas, Engineering Dielectrics Volume IIB Electrical Properties of Solid Insulation Materials, ASTM STP 926, 1987. F.P. Espino-Cortes et al, Study of Stress Grading Systems Working Under Fast Risetime Pulses, IEEE International Symposium of Electrical Insulation, Toronto, June 2006, pp 380-383 M. Li et al, Effects of Repetitive Pulse Voltages on Surface temperature Increase at End Corona Protection Region of HV Motors, Insucon, Birmingham, May 2006, pp105-108

10. M.K.W. Stranges, IEC 60034-18-41 And -42: New Technical Specifications For Inverter Duty Motor Insulation, Industry Applications Magazine, Jan 2007. 11. IEC 60034-18-42, Qualification and Acceptance test for Type II Electrical Insulation Systems Used in Rotating Electrical machines Fed form Voltage Converters, November 2006 WG Draft 12. IEC 60034-25, Guide for the Design and Performance of A.C. Motors Specifically Designed for Converter Supply, December 2006 DTS