2234 C. Zhao et al.

: Development of Contamination Flashover Pre-warning System and Analysis of Operating Experience

Development of Contamination Flashover Pre-warning

System and Analysis of Operating Experience
Chenlong Zhao, Hongwei Mei, Mingxi Zhu, Hanqi Dai, Liming Wang
Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University,
Shenzhen, Guangdong518055, China

and Zhicheng Zhou

Jiangsu Electrical Power Research Institute,
Nanjing, Jiangsu, 211102, China

ABSTRACT
Pollution flashover has been a serious threat to the operation safety for the power
system. Online monitoring is one most important way for the operation and
maintenance of power system. The leakage current on insulator surface is a
comprehensive reflection of the insulator surface contamination, environmental
conditions and other affecting factors. The purpose of outdoor insulation state on-line
monitoring could be achieved by measuring and monitoring the leakage current on
insulator surface. This paper showed that close relationship existed between leakage
current in both low humidity and saturated moisture conditions. A negative
exponential relationship exists between pollution flashover voltage and a new
parameter I* which could reflect the insulator shape and the maximum leakage current
under saturated humidity. The flashover voltage under saturated humidity could be
predicted through current obtained under low humidity conditions. A contamination
pre-warning system was constructed in accordance using this mathematical model
combined with some hardware system. Pilot systems were established in some typical
polluted area in Jiangsu Province. The results showed that the system could achieve
online monitoring purposes.
Index Terms - Insulator contamination, flashover, leakage currents, monitoring.

1 INTRODUCTION
CONTAMINATION flashover of insulator strings has
been a long-standing problem for the security and reliability of
power transmission systems. Laboratory studies showed that
leakage current was proven to be a good tool for condition
monitoring of polluted insulators. Clear relationship existed
between the flashover voltage and the surface leakage current
of insulator strings [1-3].
Most of the contaminated insulators sustained high dielectric
strength under dry conditions. When continuous heavy fog,
condensation, drizzle weather conditions occurred, the
contamination layer would be fully exposed to moisture. The
electrolyte composition would be dissolved into water to form
a conductive layer of water on the insulator surface, which
greatly reduced the insulation strength and might cause
contamination flashover accident at the normal operating
voltage. However, fog, condensation and drizzle didn`t happen
Manuscript received on 20 November 2014, in final form 28 November 2014,
accepted 10 February 2015.
frequently. The site insulators could not get fully wet under
normal operating conditions [4-5].
On the view of online monitoring, leakage current has
superiority compared with other parameter. The leakage current
flowing on insulator surface has relation with the pollution
degree, conductivity of pollution surface and the wetting degree
of the pollution. Thefrequency,waveforms phase angle and other
characteristics of leakage current correlate to the full progress of
pollution flashover. Therefore, assessment of insulator based on
leakage current monitoring is possible on theory [6-10].
Different models were set up to evaluate the safety
condition of insulators, both glass and porcelain ones, by
characteristics of leakage current [11-14]. Decades have
passed since the first online leakage current monitoring system.
Pollution assessment of insulators based on leakage current
also has many applications. Oliveira developed a leakage
current monitoring system on glass-type insulators of
overhead transmission lines in the northeast region of Brazil
[15]. Fierro-Chavez installed aon-line leakage current
monitoring of 400 kV insulator strings in polluted areasin
order to help the maintenance work on these lines [16].

DOI 10.1109/TDEI.2015.004472
IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Vol. 22, No. 4; August 2015 2235

Operation experience shows these systems has problems
on their reliability and affectivity, that is, on one hand, these
systems cannot work steady for a long time [17]; what more
important is that there is no comprehensive model which can
relate leakage current with pollution flashover effectively.
Therefore, the past leakage current monitoring systems only
realized the online monitoring of leakage current, but had not
find the relationship between the real-time leakage current
and flashover voltage under saturated humidity, thus cannot
help pollution assessment and flashover pre-warning.
New method has been proposed in this paper. The method
of predicting the value of the leakage current under high
The power supply is shown in Figure 3, including a shifting
coil voltage regulator and a test transformer (2400 kVA/ 600
kV) with rated current of 4 A which meet the requirements for
power sources of artificial pollution tests of high voltage
insulators. Hygrothermograph was used to continuously record
the temperature and relative humidity during the test.
9
6 7
1 2 3
12

humidity through the leakage current under the low-humidity AC 4 5

conditions provided a more accurate prediction of flashover 8

10

voltage of insulators under saturated moisture conditions. 11

13

The pollution flashover voltage would be predicted before

the arrival of the most severe weather and contaminate 1 Regulator；2 Transformer；3 Protection resistor；
conditions, so that the operation personnel could determine 4 Voltage divider；5 Bushing；6 Spray；7 Insulator string；
the running safety margin. 8 Small weather station；9 current leads; 10 sensor；
11 Junction box； 12 IPC；13 Isolation transformer
In this paper, the leakage current flowing through the Figure 2. Structure diagram of experimental equipment.
insulator surface after wetting in different humidity
conditions was analyzed. The relationship between flashover
voltage, ESDD, leakage current, and ambient humidity was
investigated. On the basis of analyzing these factors affecting
leakage current, this paper put forward a method to predict
the leakage current and flashover voltage in the saturated
moisture using current obtained under low humidity
conditions. Based on the above theory, pollution monitoring
network was set up in Jiangsu Province. To verify the
reliability of this system, typical data obtained from the
system was analysed in this paper.
Figure 3. Structure of test transformer system.
2 EXPERIMENT
2.2 TESTING METHOD
2.1 EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
15-unit insulator string, which was the typical configuration
The insulators used in the experiments were XWP2-160 of the 220 kV transmission line, was used in the research. The
suspension porcelain insulators, as shown in Figure 1 and basic energizing voltage was 127 kV RMS, which was equal to the
parameters in Table 1. phase to ground voltage in 220 kV transmission line. The
tested insulator is shown in Figure 4.

Figure 1. Form of the XWP2-160.

Table 1. Parameters of insulators XWP2-160.

Leakage
Diameter Area/ Shape
Form distance
mm cm2 factor
mm
XWP2-160 300 450 2780 1.104

Simulation tests were performed using the artificial fog
chamber (volume: 17 m × 15 m × 15 m) in the Electrical
Power Research Institute (EPRI), Jiangsu Province. Test
equipment includes test transformer, voltage divider, high
voltage bushings, regulator, spray device and test console, as
shown in Figure 2.
Figure 4. Structure diagram of insulator string.
The solid layer method was used to produce uniform
pollution layers on the surface of the ceramic insulators. The
insulators were artificially contaminated, then placed in dry
atmosphere for more than 10 hours to dry fully.
2236 C. Zhao et al.: Development of Contamination Flashover Pre-warning System and Analysis of Operating Experience

To study the impact of atmospheric humidity on the conductivity of insulator would experience a great increase,
insulator leakage current, an inertial control method was used and the leakage current also increased significantly.
to control the relative humidity in the test hall. It was proved to The flashover characteristics of fully-saturated insulators
be practicable to control the relative humidity in the test hall. at various ESDD are shown in Figure 7. The flashover
Prior to the start of the experiment, pre-contaminated voltage of insulatorsunder saturated moisture Uf has a
insulators were hung in the centre of the hall, and wet for an negative exponent relationship with ESDD.
hour, with the rated voltage applied. The maximum leakage U f  133.1ESDD 0.21 （1）
current was recorded. The humidity of the hall was raised step
by step as shown in Figure 5. The insulator strings were 1600
2
checked to be fully wet under each humidity condition and the 1400
ESDD(mg/cm )
0.025
maximum leakage current was recorded. At the end of the

Leakage current/mA
1200 0.05
cycle, the voltage was raised till flashover occurred. 1000
0.75
0.1
800 0.2
28.0 100 0.3
600

27.5 400
Temperature/ C

95

Relative humidity/%
200
27.0
90 0
26.5 75 80 85 90 95 100
26.0 85 Relative humidity/%

25.5 Temperature 80 Figure 6. Variation of leakage current with humidity.

25.0 Relative humidity
75 300
0 100 200 300 400 280
Time/min

Flashover voltage /kV

Figure 5. Control curves of temperature and humidity in fog chamber. 260

240

3. EXPERIMENT RESULT 220

The leakage current of the insulator surface was not only
associated with the contamination level, but also affected
by insulator shape, the string length of the insulator and
other factors. The most important factor was the moisture
and the rate of wetting of the insulator surface.
The test studied the impact of the ambient humidity and
ESDD on insulator leakage current. In accordance with the
test method described in Section 2, the rated voltage was
applied to the insulator strings with the maximum leakage
current recorded. As shown in Figure 6, the leakage current
varies with humidity and ESDD.
The following observations were made from Figure 6.
(1) For all insulator strings with different ESDD, the
maximum leakage current increased with the relative
humidity.
(2) For the samples of the same ambient humidity, the
maximum leakage current increased with ESDD, which was
mainly because ESDD had influenced the amount of water
absorption. When ESDD increased, the dissolved part of
salt also increased, making surface conductance of the
smear layer larger.
(3) Leakage current increased more rapidly when
ambient humidity exceed 85%, while it increased much
more slowly under the conditions of relative humidity was
lower than 85%. When the humidity of the hall rose to
100%, the contaminations get saturated moisture. At this
stage, wetting of insulator caused by collision between
water droplets and insulator surface increased sharply,
resulting in a large increase in the water absorption. Surface
200
180
160
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20
2
0.25 0.30
ESDD / (mg/cm )
Figure 7. Flashover voltages of insulator strings with different ESDD.
4 FORECASTING METHOD
4.1 FORECASTING OF LEAKAGE CURRENT
The wetting of contaminated insulators was produced by
condensation, collision of water droplets with insulator surface,
hygroscopic behavior of insulator deposit and chemical
diffusion between the water molecules and NaCl solution on
insulator surface. If there was no temperature difference
between the insulator surface and the environment, the wetting
of contaminated insulator could be divided into two categories:
one category consisted of hygroscopic behavior and chemical
diffusion (caused by the soluble salts and insoluble ingredient);
the other category was due to droplets. When the ambient
humidity reached 100%, part of the water vapor condenses into
water droplets, whose collision would cause the fast wetting of
pollution layer.
Take a further assumption that the wetting process of
insulator was only influenced by ambient temperature when
the ambient humidity and contamination severity fixed. In the
absence of condensation, the difference between wetting state
of insulator under 100% humidity and low humidity conditions
was only determined by the humidity. Taking into account the
situation when the ambient humidity was lower than 100%,
wetting of insulators caused by collision from water droplets
IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Vol. 22, No. 4; August 2015 2237

did not exist, only the first category of wetting should be where:
considered. Uf represented the pollution flashover voltage of insulator
Based on the above theoretical analysis, a mathematical string.
model was created to analyze the conversion relationship Ef represented the flashover voltage gradient.
between leakage current under both low humidity and In the tests of XWP2-160 insulator strings, the value of
saturated moisture. Test results showed that the maximum αand β were 195.8 and 0.211.
leakage current under saturated moisture could be deduced 50
through leakage current at low humidity together with other
parameters as ambient temperature, humidity. 45

I 100  f (I RH , RH , T ) （2） 40

Ef /(kV/m)
Where
35
I100: maximum leakage current of fully wetted insulators
under saturated moisture. 30
IRH: maximum leakage current of fully wetted insulators at
relative humidity RH. 25
0 3000 6000 9000 12000
T: ambient temperature. I* /(mA*m)

The curves in Figure 8 show the basic relationship I100 and Figure 9. Relationship betweenEf and I*.
IRH in the tests, which could be used in forecasting leakage
Based on the above research, the forecasting method of
current under saturated moisture.
pollution flashover voltage under saturated moisture could
be described as Figure 10. For a certain type of insulator
1400 string, the leakage distance L and the shape factor f can be
calculated. In the humidity of RH%, measure the maximum
1200
leakage current IRH with operating voltage applied.
1000 Calculate the leakage current under saturated moisture
I100/ mA

following Figure 8 and equation(2).Then I*could be given

800
Humidity by using equation (3).The pollution flashover voltage
600
80% gradient Ef could be obtained by calculating equation (4),
85%
90% and the pollution flashover voltage was then predicted using
400 95%
99%
equation (5). Thus the contamination state of insulator
surface and the safety margin of external insulation could
200
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 be estimated to achieve the purpose of pollution flashover
IRH / mA prevention.
Figure 8. Relationship between I100 and IRH.

4.2 FORECASTING OF FLASHOVERVOLTAGE

It could be found that in case of saturated moisture, the
pollution flashover voltage of insulator string was closely
related with its leakage distance, shape factor and the
maximum leakage current. From the tests of XWP2-160
insulators, it could be observed that a negative exponential
relationship existed between flashover voltage gradient Ef
and the maximum leakage current I100.
In order to eliminate the influence of insulator shape on
the insulating properties, one parameter I* that could reflect
the insulator shape and string strength was defined in
equation (3):
I *  I100 · f · L （3）
f was the shape factor of the insulator.
L represented the total leakage distance of insulator string
The relationship between flashover voltage and leakage
current could be defined in the equation (4) and (5)

Ef   I * （4）
U f  Ef L （5） Figure 10. Fundamental offlashover pre-warning system.
2238 C. Zhao et al.: Development of Contamination Flashover Pre-warning System and Analysis of Operating Experience

4.3 FORECASTING OF NATURAL POLLUTION 5 OPERATING EXPERIENCE

INSULATORS FLASH OVERVOLTAGE
5.1 SYSTEM COMPONENTS
The forecasting model was based on artificial
contamination test and its validation has been verified by General design of contamination flashover pre-warning
Natural pollution insulator tests. The relative humidity of system can be described as below: firstly, pollution
the test hall has been controlled and adjusted from 85% to condition data of main pollution area were collected with
100%, while the leakage current of the insulators the facility of an online monitoring system; secondly, the
measured. pollution condition data, including temperature, humidity,
leakage current have been analyzed synthetically by a smart
The maximum leakage current of insulator under
algorithm; in the end, flashover risk of current grid is given
saturated moisture has been calculated through the above to operation stuff. This system was designed to meet the
model using low humidity data. The comparison of the requirement of practical application.
calculated value and the actual value were shown in
Distributed data acquisition system was used in this
Figure 11.
application, which contained site monitoring terminal, data
300 processing unit, and backstage analyze system. The entire
Leakage current /mA

250 systems realized four functions, including site data

acquisition, 3G communication transmission, data analysis,
200
and evaluation and risk evaluation, as shown in Figure 13.
150

100 Measured value

Predictive value
50

0
85 90 95 100
Relative humidity /%
Figure 11. Validation of forecasting model.

It can be inferred from Figure 11 that the result of

maximum leakage current prediction is desirable. Under
low humidity conditions, the error between prediction and
actual value decrease with the increasing of relative
humidity. This was reasonable because the contamination
layer is not wet enough at low humidity, a higher predicted
value would mean that the insulator would have sufficient
margin even if when it was fully wet under saturated
moisture. As is shown in Figure 12, under saturated Figure 13. System setup.
humidity condition, the flashover voltage value of
This facility was mounted on power transmission tower,
prediction result is in good accord with the measured ones.
as shown in Figure 14. Storage battery and solar panel was
parallel mounted for its power supply. With smart control
280 strategy, the application can remain stable operation more
300 than 30 days without solar power.
Leakage current /mA

Flashover voltage /kV

260
200

240
100

220
0 Leakage current
Forecasting flashover voltage
Mesured flashover voltage
200
85 90 95 100
Relative humidity /%
Figure 12. Measured and predicted flashover voltage in natural
contamination tests.

Generally, the predicted value under low humidity was

lower than the value under saturated humidity. The
accuracy of this model increases with the process of wetting
degree of contamination layer, which is influenced by the
relative humidity. Figure 14. Sensor implemented on the tower.
IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation
The flashover pre-warning system includes the following
features.
(1) Digitized maps of polluted area in Jiangsu Power
Grid
23 monitoring facilities have been applied throughout
Jiangsu Province. Operators can monitor the locations, real-
time pollution conditions and pollution level of each site
through the interface of the system.
(2) Pollution flashover warning
As is shown in Figure 15, real-time status of a monitored
site can be obtained through this system. This page
contained the basic information of site name, specific
location, voltage level, insulators model and other basic
information. Meteorological parameters, such as
temperature, relative humidity, rainfall, have also been
listed, thus the estimated insulation parameters can be
determined, including leakage current, ESDD, pollution
flashover voltage, contamination level.
Figure 15. Real-time query page.
(3) Weather Forecasting
Weather forecasting unit was integrated into the system,
which would give warning information before weather as
fog, rain and snow comes.
Taking the weather forecast result and contamination
state after a pollution accumulation period into
consideration, this system could estimate the variation of
insulation state in the next few days, and further achieve the
purpose of pollution flashover pre-warning.
Typical pollution regions in Jiangsu province can be
attributed to three types below.
A). Arid regions in northern Jiangsu
Xuzhou was a traditional mining and industrial city in
northern Jiangsu. There were lots of pollution sources,
including coal mines, power plants and cement plants.
Xuzhou was one of the most severely polluted area in
Jiangsu province. Many flashover accidents had happened
in history.
B). Coastal power transmission channel for power plant
in Lianyungang.
Many salt chemical factories were located in this region.
Transmission line for Tianwan power plant- Tiandu line
was located in the area near the sea, such as 13#-18# towers.
Pilot system would help get more information of the
contamination state for the insulators.
Vol. 22, No. 4; August 2015 2239
C). Industrial belt along Yangtze River in middle Jiangsu
Due to the advantage of water transport facilities, a lot of
power, steel chemical and other high-polluting enterprises
were constructed in Nanjing, Yangzhou and Zhenjiang
which were located along the Yangtze River.
Figure 16. Distribution of terminal monitoring units.
5.2 SYSTEM APPLICATION
276# tower of Tiandu line, which was leading out towers
of Tianwan power plant, was heavily polluted. In order to
monitor the real time pollution state of the transmission line,
a measure system was implemented on the insulator of B
phase of the Tower.
Figure 17. 276# tower of Tiandu5216 line.
Rain was monitored at 276# tower in November 4th,
2012. The temperature was 20-15 ℃. Other monitoring data,
including temperature, humidity and leakage current of the
insulators, was analyzed as below.
Figure 18 shows the all-day data of this case. As shown
in Figure 18, the leakage current maintained 2 mA at 0:00in
November 3rd. From 15:00, the temperature decreased
rapidly, meanwhile, relative humidity increased rapidly.
The pollution layer thus get wet and the leakage current
increased. Rain started at 23:00. Maxim leakage current
was measured 16.7 mA at 8:10 November 4th. Due to the
heating effect of leakage current, dry area appeared at the
surface of insulators, lead to a decrease of leakage current.
Such drying and wetting process happened several times
from 18:00 3rd to 8:10 4th. Leakage current of insulators
decreased obviously afterwards for the rainfall washed out
the pollution on the insulators.
Flashover voltage of the insulator calculated by the pre-
warning system was 381 kV, which was 2.99 times the
2240 C. Zhao et al.: Development of Contamination Flashover Pre-warning System and Analysis of Operating Experience

operating voltage. According to the Warning Rule, the line ACKNOWLEDGMENT

is evaluated Normal statefor the forecasted flashover
voltage raised between 2 and 3 times the operating voltage.
This line was then carefully monitored by operation
personnel, and turned out to be safe.
On November 7th, the monitored two insulator strings
were taken off from the tower and were taken flashover
experiment .The flashover voltage was obtained by rising-
voltage method three times after fully wet.
1 Leakage current
2 Temperature
3 Relative humidity
20
The authors would like to appreciate the financial support
of national basic research program of China (973 Program:
2011CB209406).
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[17] E. Fontana, S.C. Oliveira, F.J. Md. Mcavalcanti, R. B. Lima, J. Mingxi Zhu was born in Shaanxi province, China,
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overhead transmission lines", IEEE Trans. Power Delivery, Tsinghua University, Beijing, P.R. China, in 2012.
Vol. 21, No. 4, pp. 2064-2070, 2006. Currentlyhe is a Master candidate in the
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Cavalcanti, R. A. Lima G. O. Cavalcanti, T. L. Prata and R. B. University. Hisresearch interests focus on outdoor
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and Z. D. Lins, "An experimental distribution line to develop a July 1984. He received the B.S. degree from the
polymeric insulator monitoring system", IEEE Conf. Electr. School of Electrical Engineering of Wuhan
Insul. Dielectr. Phenomena, pp.798-802, 2012. University, Wuhan, China. In 2011, he received the
[20] M. J. B. Reddy and D. K. Mohanta, "Condition monitoring of Master degree from the Department of Electrical
11 kV distribution system insulators incorporating complex Engineering of Tsinghua University. Currentlyhe is a
imagery using combined DOST-SVM approach", IEEE Trans. Ph.D. candidate in high voltage engineering in the
Dielectr. Electr. Insul., Vol. 20, No. 2 pp. 664-674, 2013. Department of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua
University. Hisresearch interests focus onhydrophobic
state assessment of composite insulators.
Chenlong Zhao was born in Shanxi province,
China, on 1 September 1986. He received the B.S. Liming Wang was born in Zhejiang province,
degree from the Department of Electrical China, on 30 November 1963, and received the B.S.,
Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, P.R. M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in high voltage engineering
China, in 2009. Currentlyhe is a Ph.D. candidate in from the Department of Electrical Engineering,
high voltage engineering in the Department of Tsinghua University, Beijing, P.R. China, in 1987,
Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University. His 1990, and 1993, respectively. He has worked at
research interests focus on high voltage and Tsinghua University since 1993. His major research
outdoor insulation. fields are high voltage insulation and electrical
discharge, flashover mechanism on contaminated
insulators, and application of pulsed electric fields.
Hongwei Mei was born in Jiangsu province, China,
on 3 November 1979. He received the B.S. and M.S. Zhicheng Zhou was born in Hunan province,
degrees from the Department of Electrical China, in 1977 and received the Ph.D. degree in high
Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, voltage engineering, from the Department of
China, in 2002 and 2004, respectively. He is currently Electrical Engineering, Huazhong University of
pursuing the Ph.D. degree in high voltage engineering Science and Technology. His research interests are
in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua state monitoring of HV transmission line, lighting
University. His research covers high voltage insulation protection and grounding technology and assessment
and electrical discharge. of applications and equipment in power system.