Abstract Recently, the research of using the return voltage method Respond to diagnosis the micro-water content of transformer insulation oil quantitatively is very rare. Aiming at the deficiency, this paper extracts an important characteristic of initial slope peak time of return voltage method Based on the theory of time domain dielectric spectroscopy. Secondly, studies the inner link between the characteristic and the micro-water content of transformer insulation oil by simulating the Extended Debye model equivalent circuit. Then, obtains the divide line of transformer insulation oil damp or not, though mouths of data of transformer insulation oil micro-water content and the initial slope peak time. Finally, the analysis results show that the method in this paper provides a new idea to diagnose micro-water content of transformer insulation oil.