Higher order perturbation theory is developed in the form of a Taylor series expansion to third order to calculate the thermal utilization of a nonuniform cell. The development takes advantage of the self-adjoint property of the diffusion operator to provide a simple development of this illustration of generalized perturbation theory employing scalar perturbation parameters. The results show how a designer might employ a second-order theory to quantify proposed design improvements, together with the limitations of second- and third-order theory. The chosen example has an exact optimization solution and thus provides a clear understanding of the role of perturbation theory at its various orders. Convergence and the computational advantages and disadvantages of the method are discussed.