In order to rapidly and accurately locate partial discharge source for getting rid of trouble and protecting normal operation of the power system

the principle of PD source location based on the time delay of arrival is discussed.The influencing factors of location accuracy are analyzed

including TDOA

the distances between PD source and sensors

and the velocity of electromagnetic waves.Four methods for acquiring TDOA are introduced and compared

including the initial peak method

the inflexion of cumulative energy curve method

the basic correlation method

and the method combining interpolation of cubic spline with correlation analysis.The results show that the last method can achieve high precision.At last

the location of PD source is calculated using simulated annealing algorithm.