Aiming at the problem of inaccurate transformer fault diagnosis in dissolved gas analysis, this paper proposes a novel diagnostic method that integrates an enhanced honey badger algorithm (EHBA) with an ensemble learning-based deep hybrid kernel extreme learning machine (DHKELM). First, kernel principal component analysis (KPCA) was deployed for feature fusion of the gas data, thus extracting more effective features. The DHKELM, combining polynomial and RBF kernel functions, was used as a base learning to build a powerful classifier with Adaboost framework. The EHBA introduces information sharing and firefly perturbation strategies based on HBA. This EHBA was harnessed to optimize the DHKELM’s critical parameters, establishing the EHBA-DHKELM-Adaboost transformer fault diagnosis model. Finally, the features garnered by KPCA were fed into the model, simulating and validating various fault diagnosis models. The findings reveal that EHBA-DHKELM-Adaboost achieves 98.75% diagnostic accuracy in transformer faults, surpassing other models.