AC Flashover Voltage Modeling for HV Outdoor Insulator

S. Jaafar, A.S. Ahmad, P.S. Ghosh and S.A.K Aljunid

Department of Electrical Engineering

Universiti Tenaga Nasional
Malaysia

Abstract

Research on insulator pollution is primarily directed to understand the physics of the growth of
discharge and to develop a mathematical model, which can predict accurately the critical flashover
voltage and current. In this paper, a new mathematical model for AC flashover voltage for practical
insulator has been proposed. The salient feature of the proposed model is to use ESDD, Equivalent
Salt Deposit Density, instead of Rp, Resistance per Unit Length, as pollution severity to predict Vec,
the rms value of critical flashover voltage. The form factor of the insulator profile has also been taken
into consideration for predicting the critical flashover voltage.

1. INTRODUCTION

High voltage transmission line insulators become
progressively coated with dirt and chemicals in
industrial or agricultural areas and by saline deposits in
coastal areas. Dry pollution does not by itself affect the
performance of high voltage insulator significantly.
Nevertheless, if the surface becomes wet owing to dew
or fog, the pollution layer becomes conducting and there
is a leakage current through it. This leakage current
eventually produces dry band causing discharges across
them. Under certain favorable conditions [1] these
discharge elongate and join to cause flashover. Research
on polluted insulator is primarily directed towards
understanding the growth phenomena of the discharge
and to develop mathematical model, which can predict
accurately the critical flashover voltage and current.
equivalent salt deposit density, instead of commonly
used parameter Rp. In the present study, it has been
observed that the new factor relating ESDD varies with
the chemical nature of the pollutant. The results of the
proposed model will be analyzed using the experimental
results presented in reference [3]. These results are
taken from an experiment carried out on standard cap
and pin insulator. The effectiveness of the model was
verified by comparing the modeled results against the
results of the experiment and good agreement has been
obtained.
2. PROPOSED MODELING TECHNIQUES
2.1 Critical Flashover Voltage, Vec Modeling

The phenomenon of pollution flashover becomes
complex under the effect of the chemical pollutant. The
study of pollutants on critical flashover has been
reported in few research works, but they failed to
propose any mathematical model based on the chemical
pollutant factors. Ghosh et al [2] in their research work
had proposed a mathematical model, which can account
for the effect of chemical change of the pollutant on the
flashover.
In this paper, first time an attempt has been made to
model the critical flashover voltage for practical
insulator by introducing a new factor called, ‘pollution
severity factor’, K1, taking into account ESDD,
The voltage balance equation to express the flashover
process under a static voltage is given below.
Vs = xNI s−n + R p (L − x)I s + U o (1)
Where Vs is the DC voltage applied to the insulator, Is
the current passing through the surface of the insulator,
Rp the surface resistance of the pollution layer, x the
length of the arc, N and n are the constants of the arc
characteristics and Uo represents the electrode fall
voltage.
The flashover mechanism is different under ac voltage
application. Therefore, the mathematical model used to
represent the flashover process of polluted insulators
under AC voltage is given by [4];
 2.2 Dimensional Analysis Of Pollution Severity
Vm = xNI − n
m + R p (L − x)I m (2)
Factor

Where Vm and Im are the peak values of voltage and According to Rizk [6], the dimension for Vec is given by
current respectively. Unlike the concept of peak values ML2T-3A-1. Based on this, an attempt has been made to
of voltage and current as stated by Renyu [4], the model equate the dimensions of the right hand side of equation
proposed by Ghosh et al [2] in their work had used Ve (8) to the left hand side of the equation. In order to
and Ie the rms values of voltage and current utilize the algebraic approach to dimensional analysis, it
respectively. is convenient to display the dimensions of the respective
variables by a tabular arrangement. The variables under
consideration are surface area, A, leakage distance of
Ve = kxNI e− n + R p (L − x)I e + U e (3) the insulator, L, static arc constant, N, form factor, F
Where, and the new factor K1.in the critical flashover equation
− (n +1) (8).
 2
k=  (4)
 1.3  The dimension of K1 is obtained using the dimensional
analysis method as shown in the following 4 X 4 matrix.
By differentiating equation (3) partially with respect to
Ie and then equating it to zero will give the Vec.
L K1 A N
1 1 n L 1 -2 2 1
Vec = Lk N R p +1
n +1 n +1 n (5) M 0 0 0 1
T 0 0 0 -3
A 0 0 0 n-1
In this paper, the modeling of Vec has been proposed
based on ESDD, the surface area, A, and form factor, F
instead of conventional Rp. From the above matrix it is evident that n=0 yeilds an
overall dimension of ML2T-3A-1for the right hand side
1 1− n
of equation (8) and it is equal to the dimension of Vec.
R p = ESDD n .F −1 .A n (6) Thus, from the above analysis, we conclude that the
pollution severity factor for the practical insulator may
It has been observed that the expression for Vec which is be defined as;
obtained by substituting (6) in (5) violates the rules of
dimensional analysis. Therefore to satisfy the above rule
a more appropriate expression has been proposed for Rp
K1 =
Salinity
ESDD * L
(
cm − 2 ) (9)
as shown in equation (7)[7].

1 1− n 3. DISCUSSION OF MODELED OUTPUT

Rp = K 1n .F −1 .A n (7)
3.1 Experimental Data
Thus the proposed equation for Vec is given by the
following equation (8). The data used in the present study has been taken from
the experiment performed in the small fog chamber at
1 1 1 1− n −n CEPEL’s laboratory [3]. The experiment was conducted
Vec = L.K n +1 .N n +1 .K 1n +1 .A n +1 .F n +1 (8) according to the IEC507 standard specification. The
experiment has been conducted on cap and pin insulator
The new proposed factor, K1 has been defined as of the dimensions shown in the following Figure 1. The
pollution severity factor for practical insulator. insulator strings were tested in the vertical position.
Parameters of the insulator; The experimental results are tabled in Table 1.

D, effective diameter = 25.5 cm POLLUTION AVERAGE ESDD U50

P, height = 14.6 cm DISTRIBUTION VALUE (mg/cm2) (kV)

Bottom polluted 0.068 120.8

and top clean
Half of top and 0.067 91.20
bottom polluted
Half of bottom 0.069 112.8
polluted
Region 3 polluted 0.070 116.4

Region 2 and 3 0.062 108.8

polluted
Region 1 polluted 0.070 131.4

All regions 0.066 106.4

polluted
Region Area (cm2) Leakage distance Form Table 1 -The experimental data
(cm) factor

1 177 6.32 0.25 3.2 Analysis Of Modeled Output

2 362 7.54 0.16 In applying the proposed modeling technique, there are
several issues, which could be addressed. Earlier
3 400 6.18 0.10
research works have used constant values of N and n to
model critical flashover voltage. In fact, for the first
4 633 11.09 0.22
time in the research of pollution flashover modeling,
Ghosh et al [2] proposed that the optimal combination
Total 1572 31.13 0.73
of N and n is dependent on the chemical nature of the
pollutants. In this case, the values for arc constant,
Figure 1-Insulator Characteristics
N=360 and n=0.59 have been used for the modeling.

The voltage is applied from 8 kV/200 kV, 200kVA
testing transformer, having the shunt resistor to be 2.5 Ω
and short-circuit current 30 Arms at 90 kVrms. Using
these set-ups, the voltage is applied to the insulator
string followed by the wetting process. The wetting
process of the insulator is using kaolin in the
concentration of 40 g/l, steam input rate at 0.35 g/h/m3
and salinity of 3.5 g/l of salt fog. The up and down
method with ten voltage applications is used to
determine the flashover voltage.
Using equations (8&9) the values of modeled Vec, are
computed using insulators dimensions, arc constant and
ESDD from Table 1.
The experimental results are then compared against the
modeled results. The computed results shown in Table 2
clearly indicate that the proposed model is in good
agreement with the experimental results. The
effectiveness of the proposed model is judged by the
mean of the standard deviation of the modeled output of
the Vec ie. 3.73.
 POLLUTION U50-exp U50- σmodel Mean 5. REFERENCES
DISTRIBUTION (kV) model (%) σmodel
(kV) (%) [1] P. S. Ghosh and N.Chatterjee, “Arc
Bottom polluted 120.8 109.4 3.06 Propagation Over Electrolytic Surface Under
and top clean Power Frequency Voltage”, IEEE Trans. on
Half of top and 91.2 110.5 4.60 Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation, Vol.3, No.
bottom polluted 4, August 1996, pp. 529-536
Half of bottom 112.8 108.5 1.96
polluted [2] P. S. Ghosh and N.Chatterjee, “Polluted
Region 3 116.4 80.64 5.54 Insulator Flashover Model for AC voltage”,
polluted 3.73 IEEE Trans. on Dielectrics and Electrical
Insulation, Vol. 2, 1995, pp.128-136
Region 2 and 3 108.8 116.0 2.57 [3] Ricardo W.S. Garcia, Ronaldo Bosignoli and
polluted Edegard Gomes Jr, “Influence Of The Non-
Region 1 131.4 80.64 6.22 Uniformity Of Pollution Distribution On The
polluted Electrical Behavior Of Insulator”, Proceeding
ICPADM, 1991, pp. 342-345
All regions 106.4 111.5 2.19
polluted [4] Guan Zhicheng and Zhang Renyu,“Calculation
of DC and AC Flashover Voltage of Polluted
Table 2: Comparison between the experimental and Insulators”, IEEE Trans. on Electrical
calculated data Insulation, Vol.25, 1990, pp.723-729

[5] Md Abdus Salam, Hussein Ahmad, et al,

4. CONCLUSION
A new mathematical model for flashover voltage
modeling, Vec = ƒ(L, N, A, K1), has been proposed
using the ‘pollution severity factor’, K1. The proposed
factor K1 utilizes the normal parameters given in the
manufacturer’s data and maintenance conditions values
to calculate the critical flashover voltage, Vec. Hence,
the new model has been found to be more effective
compared to the earlier models in findings the critical
flashover voltage.
The modeled outputs of Vec closely follow the
experimental results and can predict Vec with the
difference of 0.03 in mean standard deviation. The
present model is validated against experimental and
theoretical results and it is found to be in good
agreement.
“Effect Of Equivalent Salt Deposit Density On
Flashover Voltage Of Contaminated Insulator
Energized By HVDC”, Proceeding ICPADM,
2000, pp. 821-824.
[6] Farouk A. M. Rizk, “Application Of
Dimensional Analysis To Flashover
Characteristics Of Polluted Insulators”, IEE
Proceeding, Vol. 117, No. 12, 1970, pp. 2257-
2260
[7] S. Jaafar, A.S. Ahmad, P.S. Ghosh and S.A.K
Aljunid, “ A New Approach In Modeling AC
Flashover Voltage For Polluted Insulator”,
CEIDP, 2002, pp. 558-561
Authors address: Sabarina Jaafar, Dept. Of Electrical
Engineering, Universiti Tenaga Nasional,
Km. 7, Jalan Kajang Puchong, 43009 Kajang, Selangor,
Malaysia. Phone: 603-89212020 ext 6308.
Email: sabarina@uniten.edu.my