In the design and development of high voltage insulation systems, partial discharge measurements are often used for system characterization and evaluation. The aim of this work was to investigate the SQUID sensor as an amplifier in a high voltage environment. An HTS SQUID amplifier has been developed and tested under laboratory conditions. Different SQUIDs and a number of different input configurations have been investigated. Preliminary data indicate that the system has a performance similar to a commercial system used as reference. However, calculations and simulations show that the new method has potential for further improvement.