The hipot test is a nondestructive test that determines the adequacy of electrical insulation for the normally occurring over voltage transient. This is a high-voltage test that is applied to all devices for a specific time in order to ensure that the insulation is not marginal.

Hipot tests are helpful in finding nicked or crushed insulation, stray wire strands or braided shielding, conductive or corrosive contaminants around the conductors, terminal spacing problems, and tolerance errors in cables. Inadequate creepage and clearance distances introduced during the manufacturing process.

The production-line hipot test, however, is a test of the manufacturing process to determine whether the construction of a production unit is about the same as the construction of the unit that was subjected to type testing. Some of the process failures that can be detected by a production-line hipot test include, for example, a transformer wound in such a way that creepage and clearance have been reduced.

Such a failure could result from a new operator in the winding department.

Other examples include identifying a pinhole defect in insulation or finding an enlarged solder footprint.

As per IEC 60950, The Basic test Voltage for  Hipot test is the 2X (Operating Voltage) + 1000 V

The reason for using 1000 V as part of the basic formula is that the insulation in any product can be subjected to normal day-to-day transient over voltages.

Experiments and research have shown that these over voltages can be as high as 1000V.