The 19th International Symposium on High Voltage Engineering, Pilsen, Czech Republic, August, 23 – 28, 2015

STUDY ON THE CRITICAL CONDITIONS OF THE INSULATOR STRING

COVERED WITH ICE BASED ON THE LEAKAGE CURRENT
1 2 2 2 2
Q.J Tang , H.Yang ,X.D Liu , X.L Yang , Zhou Li
1
State Grid Tianjin Power Chengnan Power Supply Branch, Tianjin, China
2
High Voltage Division, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China
*Email: tangqijun.happy@163.com

Abstract: The research is focused on the growing trend of the leakage current (LC), of a
porcelain suspension insulator during the flashover progress in different ice parameters
with a glaze ice accretion. The result shows that, by the difference of the LC growing
trend, the flashover progress on the ice accreted without voltage could be divided into
four components including the weight of ice accretion, the ESDD on insulator surface, the
number of unit per insulator string and the water conductivity for icing, which were
corresponding to the flashover phenomenon. Two kind of LC (IW and IFT) were defined to
study the relationship between LC and flashover in different ice parameters. In the
condition of ice saturation, those two indexes are just sensitive to the water conductivity
for icing while the flashover voltage is sensitive to almost all the parameters which
indicates that the LC is better in the predicting of flashover. The analysis to the figures
also shows that the LC is positive corresponding to resistance per unit length while the
flashover voltage is positive corresponding to the resistance of all the insulator string
accreted with glaze.

Keywords: ice-covered insulator; flashover; LC; ice parameter, critical condition

1 INTRODUCTION grown in a wet regime with a density of about

Many cold climate regions of the world, such as
Canada [1], China [2], England [3], Japan [4],
United State [5], have experienced a series of
incidents due to the ice accretion on the overhead
transmission line. Researchers from those
countries have made a lot of contributions on the
effects of the ice accretion on the overhead
transmission line. Results show that in addition to
the mechanical damage owing to the excessive
static and dynamic loads created by the
combination of atmospheric ice and wind, the
electrical performance of insulators is adversely
affected by the ice accretions [6-7]. The electrical
problem is generally caused by the ice bridging of
the air gap between the insulator sheds which
could reduce the leakage distance of the insulator
string and lead to partial discharge or arc between
the air gaps. Under certain conditions, a drastic
decrease in electrical insulation strength will lead
to insulator flashover and consequent power
outages [8].
A lot of researches on ice-covered insulators have
been reported [9-15]. The result showed that when
the applied voltage was sufficiently high and
maintained for adequate time, the leakage current
(LC) persistently increased until flashover took
place [9]. Several ice parameters, including type,
height of ice accretion, the equivalent salt deposit
density (ESDD) on the surface of the insulator, as
well as electrical conductivity of water used for ice
formation had significant influence on the electric
character of ice-covered insulators [10]. The ice
3
0.87g/cm , called glaze, which can form the icicles
on insulators, was known to be the most
dangerous type of ice [11]. Almost all the
researches on the electrical characters of ice-
covered insulators are based on the glaze
accretion [1-11]. And the increase on the height,
ESDD, conductivity would lead to a varying
degrees decrease on the flashover voltage, while
an increase on the LC [10]. F. Meghnefi [12]
divided the ice accumulation periods into two parts
according to the partial discharges and partial arcs
regimes with the time and frequency analyses of
the LC waveforms. In addition, to detect the
transition time between the two periods, he also
gave different ways based on the third and the fifth
harmonic temporal variation of the LC and the ratio
of the rms LC value to the maximum. Kawai
observed two kinds of arcs over ice-covered
insulators, the white bright arc and flashover [5].
Masanori Hara moved forward based on Kawai’s
achievement [13]. He researched the values of LC
just before white arcs and flashover and divided
the whole icing period (with a voltage of 83kV rms)
into four components according to the obvious
differences of the LC growing trend between the
adjacent components. The threshold value to occur
white arc was 18mA and for the porcelain insulator
the transition value was 180mA from white arc to
flashover. The State Grid Electricity Research
Institute found the similar phenomenon that the
flashover period with booster method could also be
divided into four components which could
correspond to the growing progress of the arc by
the analysis of the pictures and the harmonic [14].
Although a large number of investigations have The data were recorded on the Tek4000 digital
been carried out on the flashover process on ice- oscilloscope in succession.
covered insulators, the research was still mainly
focused on the measure, the time and frequency
analyses of the voltage and the LC during the
flashover in different ice parameters. There still
lack study on the relationship between the LC just
before the flashover in the different ice parameters.
The flashover of ice-covered insulator is a very
complicate progress. However, when it comes to
separation of continuous discharges and random
discharges appearing in the periodic waveforms,
the frequency domain analysis alone does not
provide a clear signature [15]. Instead, leakage
current behavior of an ice-covered insulator would
be of great interest to utilities since it could be used
to predict the time of the flashover imminence. This
paper, we’ll focus on the growing trend of the LC
during the flashover progress in different ice
parameters and build the corresponding
relationship between the LC and ice parameters, Figure 1. Experience system and the climate
which would be significative to improve the on-line room
monitoring based on the LC.
2.2 Experimental Procedure
2 Experimental Setup and Procedure
In this study, a glaze ice layer was accreted on
2.1 Experimental Setup the insulator strings for each flashover test in the
condition as shown in Table 2 [10].
The XWP2-160 suspension insulators which have
been widely used on 500kV overhead transmission Table 2. Ice accretion condition.
line in East China Power Grid was used in this
study. The geometry and electrical characteristics Air Precipita
Ice Freezing Wind
of the insulator are listed in Table 1 type water flux speed
tempera -tion
-ture direction
60±20L/h/m -5 to
Table 1.Geometric and electrical characteristics Glaze 3 to 5m/s 45º±10º
2 -15℃
of the insulator used.

Leakage Superficial
Type Height Dismeter
distance area
XWP2-
450mm 2759cm2 160mm 300mm
160
All the flashover tests on ice-covered insulators
were carried out in a cylinder climate room in Xi’an
Jiaotong University which is shown in the Figure 1.
The inner diameter of the climate room was 4m
and the height was 5.2m, therefore, it can meet the
requirements for the ice-covered flashover testing
of 5 XWP2-160 insulator units. The ice was formed
from supercooled water sprayed by the nozzle
system at the top of the climate room into the
relatively uniform air flow produced by an air
circulated system. A weight sensor was used to
monitor the growing of the ice accretion. High
voltage was supplied through the voltage regulator
(T) and the transformer (B, 150kV, 600kVA) which
was in compliance with GB/T 4585-0004 and GB/T
4585-0004 requirements, as shown in Figure 1.
The measure system was composed by a
Rogowski coil (10:1, 1Hz-20MHz) for the monitor of
LC and a resistance-capacitance divider (10000:1)
for the monitor of the voltage on insulator string.
In study, the weight of the ice accretion, the ESDD
of the insulators, the number of insulator units and
the electrical conductivity of water used for ice
formation were considered as four influencing
factor to the flashover. So during the preparatory
phase the proper ESDD should be daubed
uniformly on the insulator surface and cooling the
insulator string at -12℃ without spraying. Setting
the temperature back to -5 ℃ with the proper
electrical conductivity water sprayed until the
excepted weight of ice accretion was achieved.
Closing the nozzle system and maintaining the
temperature at -5℃ for 15min to make sure ice
freezing completely after that temperature was set
to 0 ℃ at which the melting progress could be
simulated. The ice accretion finished and the ice-
covered insulator string was ready for the flashover
test.
During the flashover progress, high leakage
currents form an adequate power supply will
change the length and shape of their gaps, modify
the ice surface conductivity, or sometimes will
totally shed the ice deposit. These changes will
affect the flashover voltage of test insulator which
means that only one flashover test can be IS: the current peak after the flashover occurred
achieved for any ice-covered insulator. In this
experiment, the voltage was equably increased
(about 5kV/s) until the flashover happened, which
called directly flashover here. To decrease the
influence of random error and decentralize, the
average value of 10 effective values was used as
the final result.

3 Result and Discussion

3.1 The growing of LC during flashover

Generally, the LC of the ice accreted without high

voltage before flashover could also be divided into
four components according to the obvious
(a)Positive evolution of leakage current before
differences growing trend between the adjacent
flashover occurred
components (as shown in Figure2(a)) which was
similar to the flashover progress on the ice which
accreted with high voltage. The consistency
indicated that the four stages growing trend of the
LC was a general law before the flashover
occurred which could be used to analysis the
characteristic of the flashover and predict the time
of the flashover imminence.

As shown in Figure 2(a), in the stage Ⅰ, the LC

nearly kept constant and the amplitude was about
40mA. In this stage the corona was the mainly
form of discharge. By the rising of the voltage, the
LC jumped to about 200mA as the lower surface of
the insulator closing to the high-voltage was
shorted by the arc (as shown in Figure 3(a)) and
(b)Leakage current after flashover occurred
then the LC grew into step Ⅱ in which the corona
changed into visible arc and the LC increased Figure 2. Leakage current during flashover
quickly with the rising of the voltage while the
gradient of the LC almost kept constant (as shown
in Figure 3(b)) until the LC came into stage Ⅲ. In
this stage the LC came back to be constant again
which was a little similar to stage Ⅰ while the
difference was that the amplitude was much higher
which was about 1A and the time of duration was
much shorter. The white arc occurred (as shown in
Figure 3(c)) frequently during this stage and with
the sequentially rising of the voltage the white arc
grew into flashover finally meaning the LC (a) (b) (c) (d )
increased to step Ⅳ (as shown in Figure 3(d)). To
Figure 3. Leakage current during flashover
study the LC clearly the LC in the step Ⅳ was
magnified as shown in Figure 2(b). Four kinds Among the four kinds of LC, the IW and IFT was at
important LC were defined as follow: the critical moment before the flashover occurred
which would contain some information about the
IW: characteristic current, the average of the flashover and be used to predict the time of the
flashover imminence. Therefore, the influence of
current in step Ⅲ
different ice parameter on the IW and IFT including
the weight of ice accretion, the ESDD on the
IFT: critical current, the current peak of the half insulator surface, the number of unit per insulator
cycle before the flashover occurred string and the water conductivity for icing will be
discussed below.
IF: the current peak at the flashover occurred
3.2 Effect of the ice weight
In this paper, 3 units of the insulator for each string
2
were adopted. The ESDD was 0.1mg/cm which
could be used to simulate the moderate
contamination and the water conductivity was
150µS/cm which was consistent with the common
rainfall in East China. In that condition, the ice
accretion weight was set as the variable from 1kg
to 7kg to study the effect to flashover, as Figure 4
shown. The result indicated that with the increasing
of the ice accretion the flashover voltage increased
while the LC decreased whose fitting formulas
could been seen as follow.
U  57.34  23.83e 0.22m (1)
IW  0.92  1.7e 0.76m (2)
I FT  1.75  2.03e 0.35m (3)
where: U = Voltage in Kilovolt (KV)
IW = Characteristic Current in Ampere (A)
IFT = Critical current in Ampere (A)
m = Weight in Kilogram (Kg)
Figure 4. Effect of the ice weight to flashover
The effect was obvious at first but when the weight
reached to about 2kg for per unit both of voltage
and LC showed a trend to be saturated. With the
increasing of the ice accretion the icicle occurred
which was not long enough to bridge the gaps
completely between the insulators. The ice
accretion, especially the icicles, conduced to the
inhomogeneous distribution contour of the electric
field and in some high-stress zones, like the lower
surface of the insulator closing to HV and the top of
the icicles, high discharge activity occurred which
made for the formation of local arc which would
finally grew into flashover under certain conditions.
However, when the ice accretion was enough to
bridge the gaps totally, there were not so much air
gaps on ice accretion which meant it’s harder to
form local arc on the ice accretion in a relatively
uniformly distributing of electrical field that lead to
the saturated trend of the voltage and the LC.
During this step, more ice accretion affected the
voltage and the LC little and we defined this step
as the ice saturation. In the study on the effect of
other ice parameters the ice accretion was set as
2kg per unit which weakened the effect of ice
weight.
3.3 Effect of the ESDD
In this study, the condition of the ice parameters
were same as before except the ESDD which was
set as the variable to study the effect to flashover,
as Figure 5 shown. The result shows that the
flashover voltage decreased while the IW was
about 0.8A and the IFT was about 1.3A which were
affected little with the increasing of ESDD on the
surface of insulator. The formulas for flashover
voltage could be fitted as follow.
U  36.72  38.82e 3.75 ESDD (4)
where: U = Voltage in Kilovolt (KV)
ρ ESDD = Density of ESDD in Miligram per
2
Square Centimetre (mg/cm )
Figure 5. Effect of the ESDD to flashover
In the condition of ice saturation, the voltage was
mainly worked on the lower surface of the insulator
closing to the HV on which no ice accreted but just
ESDD. That process was a little similar to pollution
flashover and with the rising of ESDD the voltage
needed to short the lower surface decreased which
would show a saturate trend finally. When a steady
local arc was formed on that surface, the ESDD
would not affect the flashover characters any more.
Though the electronegativity of the ice may absorb
the ions in the ESDD leading a decrease to the
resistor of the ice accretion, the effect was not very
remarkable which affect little to the LC. As the
ESDD almost had nothing to do with LC, a value of
2
0.1mg/cm was selected in the later tests.
3.4 Effect of the number of the insulator unit I FT  0.006  0.262 (8)

In this experiment, the number of the unit per

where: U = Voltage in Kilovolt (KV)
insulator string was set as the variable. The water
IW = Characteristic Current in Ampere (A)
conductivity, ice weight and the ESDD were
IFT = Critical current in Ampere (A)
selected as discussed before. The result could be
σ = Conductivity in Micro Siemens per
seen in Figure 6.The result showed that the
Centimetre (μS/cm)
flashover voltage increased with the increasing of
the number of unit per insulator string while the LC
With the increasing of the water conductivity, the
kept steady. The IW was about 0.8A and the IFT
resistance decreased leading to the increase of LC
was about 1.3A which were similar to the result in
which made for the formation of the corona
Figure 4. The flashover voltage could be fitted as
streamer and the local arc. In that condition, within
follow.
relatively low voltage the flashover took place.
U  17.48n  11.14 (5)

where: U = Voltage in Kilovolt (KV)

With the increasing of the insulators in each

string, the arc distance increased which led to the
increase of the flashover voltage. Compare the test
condition of Figure 4 and Figure 5, it could be
found that the increase of arc distance or the
resistance of the ice accretion had nothing to do
with the LC for that 3 units per insulator string was
selected for the further test. To make a deeper
discussion on what really affected the LC, the test
by changing the water conductivity to change the
resistance of the ice accretion per unit was needed.
Figure 7. Effect of the water conductivity to
flashover

3.6 Discussion

Comparing the four series of tests, it could be

Figure 6. Effect of number of unit per insulator
string to flashover
3.5 Effect of the water conductivity for icing
In this test, the water conductivity was set as the
variable and other three ice parameters were set
as discussed before. The result showed that the
flashover voltage decreased and the LC increased
with the increasing of water conductivity used for
ice accretion, as shown in Figure 7. The formulas
of the voltage and LC were fitted as follow.
U  0.16  92.23 (6)
IW  0.004  0.142 (7)
found that the flashover voltage was easily to be
affected by change the ice parameters while the IW
and IFT was relatively steady, as shown in Table 3.
In the condition of ice saturation, when the ice
parameters were changed, for example, increasing
the number of unit per insulator string, the
decreasing the ESDD or the water conductivity,
which would lead to the increasing the resistance
of the insulator after ice accretion, the flashover
voltage increased which could be summarized as
the relationship between flashover and the
resistance was positive correlation. However, the
LC was mainly affected by the water conductivity.
Comparing the results in Figure 4, Figure 5 and
Figure 6, it could be found that the LC was
insensitive to the resistance but sensitive to the
conductivity. If the ice accretion on the insulator
string was assumed to be uniform, it could be
considered that the LC positive correlated to the
resistance per unit length.
In the stationary area where the ice accretion was
severs, the conductivity of the rainfall could be
monitored precisely. So the IW and the IFT could be
used to predict the flashover time of the flashover
imminence. Comparing the IW and the IFT, it’s
obvious that the dispersion of the IW was smaller.
Besides, more response time could be got if the IW
was adopted to warning the flashover. So the IW
was recommended to adopt in the on-line
monitoring.
Table 3.Effect of the ice parameters to flashover
Flashover
m ESDD N σ
characters
U Obvious Obvious Obvious Obvious
IW Obvious
Not Not
Obvious
obvious obvious
Not Not
IFT Obvious Obvious
obvious obvious
4 Conclusion
The results mentioned in this paper may be
summarized as follows.
1) By the difference of the LC growing trend, the
flashover progress on the ice accreted without
voltage could be divided into four components
which were corresponding to the flashover
phenomenon. Compared to the study before, that
kind growing trend of LC was general existed.
2) The IW and IFT were defined to represent the
characters of the flashover. In the condition of ice
saturation, those two indexes were insensitive to
the ESDD and the number of unit per insulator
string while sensitive to the water conductivity
which showed a law that the IW and IFT positive
correlated to the resistance per unit length.
3) The flashover voltage was sensitive to all the
four ice parameters mentioned in this paper.
Increasing the resistance of the insulator string
with ice accretion by adjust the parameters, the
flashover increased as a relation nearly direct
proportion.
4) For the IW and IFT were relatively steady in
different ice parameters, those LC could be used to
predict the flashover. The IW was more precise as
the smaller dispersion and longer response time
for the early warning which was recommended
here to adopt in the on-line monitoring.
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