In view of the current partial discharge(PD) location system of the substation, only accurate two-dimensional location can be achieved, the application of three-dimensional location method in PD detection of substation is studied. This paper uses multi-direction measurement and location method of PD based on directional antenna, which adopts detection mode rotating two ultra high frequency directional antennas in multiple detection points, using different time delay of the antennas under different rotation angles to solve equations for the three-dimensional PD source localization. In order to realize the field application of this method, a set of three-dimensional PD location system is designed. The system acquisitions parameters like angle、time delay、coordinates of the system and transmits them to host computer. Then the three-dimensional coordinate of PD source is calculated in the host computer software based on LabVIEW, the results are also displayed and saved by the software. Finally, the effectiveness of the system is verified by experiments. The results show that the three-dimensional location deviation of the PD source is not more than 0.4 meters, which is much better than two-dimensional location accuracy.