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Leakage Current and Trapped Charge Characteristics for Glass Insulator String
Under Contaminated Conditions

Conference Paper · October 2015

DOI: 10.1109/CENCON.2015.7409550

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 Leakage Current and Trapped Charge Characteristics
for Glass Insulator String Under Contaminated
Conditions
N. A. Othman*, M. A. M. Piah and Z. Adzis.
Institute of High Voltage & High Current
Faculty of Electrical Engineering,
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia,
81310 Johor Bahru, Malaysia
* Corresponding author: nazlin7@live.utm.my

Abstract—This paper reports a study on leakage current (LC) performance. Thus, the present work is conducted to
and trapped charge characteristics for contaminated glass understand the LC and charge characteristics for contaminated
insulator string. Four units of glass insulators recently removed glass insulator string.
from service were contaminated according to IEC 60507. The
measurement of trapped charge distribution was made by a II. MATERIAL AND METHODS
radially shaped stainless steel mesh surrounding each insulator
while LC was measured using 100 Ω shunt resistor. The results A. Simulation Setting
revealed that as the contamination levels increase, the amplitude The simulation works was conducted using QuickField™
of LC increases; but the amplitude of trapped charge decreases. professional software. The simulation setting included type of
insulator, material properties and problem, and is thoroughly
Keywords—leakage current (LC); trapped charge; glass
insulator string; transmission line; contamination; described in [5]. Meanwhile, the contamination layer thickness
is listed in Table 1.
I. INTRODUCTION
TABLE 1 CONTAMINATION LAYER THICKNESS ACCORDING TO
Contamination flashover has been a serious issue for the CONTAMINATION LEVEL [6]
last few decades. It is known as major cause of overhead
insulation failure and thus greatly threatens the reliability of Contamination Layer Thickness
Contamination Level
(mm)
electric power transmission systems. Insulator strings that are
widely used for overhead transmission line has beset crucial Clean None
problems when dealing with contamination [1]. Light 1.0

The deposition of soluble or non-soluble contamination Medium 1.5

sources on the surface of insulators during the long-term
operation may result in a reduction of its dielectric strength [2].
Contamination sources in the combination of moisture may
lead to the formation of wet conducting layer and leakage
current (LC) flows.
It is now an accepted fact that the flow of LC on the surface
of contaminated insulator is due to flow of charges [3]. Still, it
needs to be emphasized that electrostatic charge can exist on
the insulator surface. The surfaces of insulator that contain
equal number of positive and negative charges are considered
safe but may cause harmful effects in imbalanced conditions
such as transient interferences. This imbalanced state in the
insulator can build up a large local charge which ultimately
leads to the occurrence of electrostatic discharges (ESD). The
formation of electrostatic field on the surface of insulators will
create electrical pathways that may allow LC to flow across the
insulator surface and eventually lead to breakdown [4].
Although electrostatic charge is not directly related with
LC, the slow movement of this charge under applied field may
cause LC to flow and eventually affect the insulator
Heavy 2.0
B. Experimental Works
Ammonium chloride (salt) with weights of 10 g, 50 g, and
100 g is dissolved in 1 liter of distilled water to form different
salt solutions and subsequently tested for contamination level
using Equivalent Salt Deposit Density (ESDD) method. Four
units of HV glass insulators were pre-contaminated with those
different salt solutions and were completely dried for 24 hours
before entering the test chamber for voltage injection. The
operating voltage of 33 kV AC was applied when the
contamination layer is completely wetted and the relative
humidity was in the range of 80 % to 100 %. The laboratory
experiment for artificial pollution tests was conducted based
on IEC 60507 [7]. Full measurement setup that combines the
charge measurement system [5] and LC measurement system
[8] is illustrated in Fig.1. While the pictorial view of
conducted experimental setup is presented in Fig. 2 with the
tested insulators were tagged as insulator I1, I2, I3 and I4
consecutively from the top for insulator 1, 2, 3 and 4.
 (a) (b)
Fig. 3. Stainless steel mesh (a) Mesh size, and (b) Location of the mesh

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

A. Simulation Results
Fig. 1. Full measurement setup for LC flow and charge distribution
For the sake of simplicity, only current density distribution
along creepage distance will be considered in this section. The
distribution of current density along creepage distance
(measured from insulator cap to insulator pin) for insulator 1
and insulator 4 is depicted in Fig. 4 and Fig.5, respectively. It
is apparent from both figures that the amplitude of current
density increases as the contamination levels is increased. The
distribution of current density also shows the highest value
near to insulator pin. This is true since experimental evidences
show that the formation of dry bands was first observed near
to insulator pin [9].
Table 2Table presents the contamination levels of the
tested salt solution according to an application guide for
contaminated insulators proposed by CIGRE [10]. Based on
this result, different levels of contamination are obtained after
the insulator was contaminated with ammonium chloride.

Fig. 2. Pictorial view of experimental setup for leakage current and charge 0.025
measurement
0.02
A radially shaped stainless steel mesh shown in Fig. 3 was
Current Density (A/m )

placed axially at a radial distance of 2 cm from each of

2

insulators’ circumference except for insulator 4; the radial 0.015

distance for insulator 4 was changed to 4 cm to prevent the

occurrence of any discharge. Each mesh is then connected to 0.01

four units of charge sensors and connected to data logger

namely Labquest2. It is worth to state that the measurements 0.005
were carried out for at least 3 times in each condition and the
charge distribution measurement was accomplished in duration 0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350
of 30 minutes to assure the charge achieved the equilibrium Creepage Distance (mm)
state. Thus, results presented in the next section are averaged Clean Light Contaminated Medium Contaminated Heavy contaminated
value from three times measurements.
Fig. 4. Current density distribution along creepage distance for insulator 1
The flow of LC was measured by a 100 Ω shunt resistor
located at the grounded end of the string insulators without any
electrical contact with the HV supply. The measured LC is then
continuously captured by a PicoScope and subsequently
recorded by a computer.
 0.025
atmosphere; thus the surfaces of glass at position 2 and 3 have
more negative charges.
0.02
Meanwhile, for contaminated insulators, the amplitude of
Current Density (A/m2)

charge increase gradually as the contamination level is varied

0.015
from light to heavy at all four positions. A possible
explanation for this distribution trend might be due to the
0.01
enhancement in conductivity and humidity causing the space
charge attached to air molecule to migrate to the next
0.005 insulator.
Though this work shows negative distribution pattern for
0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 charge, it is important to articulate that if there is positive
Creepage Distance (mm)
charge distribution trend, it indicates breakdown process has
Clean Light Contaminated Medium Contaminated Heavy contaminated
already begun [12]. In other cases, positive and negative
Fig. 5. Current density distribution along creepage distance for insulator 4 charge distribution trend is found in [5, 13] which suggests
that the polarity of charge swinging occurs at the center of the
suspension string insulator in their study.
TABLE 2 CONTAMINATION LEVEL ACCORDING TO SALT SOLUTION
C. Leakage Current Amplitude Results
Salt weight (g) ESDD (mg/cm2) Contamination level [10] Maximum value of LC flows along the surface of insulator
0 0.00 Clean string under different levels of contamination is shown in
Fig.7. It is apparent from this figure that the value of LC
10 0.05 Light
magnitude increases as the contamination level is increased.
50 0.07 Medium This observation is true since the LC pattern extracted from
100 0.13 Heavy [2] also increases when the insulator becomes more
contaminated. It is also worth to mention that the value of LC
presented is in RMS value.
B. Charge Distribution Results
3.5
The distribution of charge measured from experimental
works is illustrated in Fig. 6. As revealed by the figure, there is 3
Leakage Current (mA)

a clear trend of negative charge distribution for all four 2.5

insulators at different contamination levels. Interestingly, the
distribution of charge for clean and contaminated insulators is 2
much different; the amplitude of charge at position 4 is much 1.5
smaller for the clean insulators while the distribution of charge
1
is much higher at position 1 for contaminated insulators.
0.5
0
1 2 3 4
CLEAN LIGHT MEDIUM HEAVY
0
Contamination Level
-10
Fig. 7. Maximum value of leakage current in RMS value
Charge (nC)

-20

-30 D. Correlation between Leakage Current and Charge

An attempt to find relationship between LC flow along the
-40
insulator surface and charge trap on the glass insulator was
-50 also carried out. Fig. 8 shows the graph of charge amplitude
Insulator position versus LC amplitude. It is worth to inform that the charge
amplitude presented in Fig. is the sum of the charges from all
Clean Light Medium Heavy
four insulators using equation (1);
Fig. 6. Experimental results of charge distribution with different contamination
level 1
qT = ( q1 +q 2 +q 3 +q 4 ) (1)
The presented result can be explained by considering that 4
electron injection occurs at the interface of high voltage
electrode and dielectric [11]. The injection process in clean Interestingly, as the LC amplitude increase with the
insulators after a certain time is believed to cause slow contamination levels, the amplitude of charge decreases. The
migration of electron to the next insulator surface through the reduction in charge amplitude shows that some of charge is
trapped in the contamination layer; instead of being mobile in
 the presence of conductive path, the charge movement is [8] N. A. Othman, M. A. M. Piah, Adzis Z. Partial Discharge
attracted to the contamination particle. The charge in this Characterization based on Leakage Current Pulses Waveform for
Contaminated Glass Insulator String. 1st ICRIL-International
event is also known as electrostatic charge. This result Conference on Innovation Science and Technology (IICIST 2015).
supports the theory that contamination may attract and trap the Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 2015.
space charge as stated in [14]. [9] Williams D, Haddad A, Rowlands A, Young H, Waters R. Formation
and characterization of dry bands in clean fog on polluted insulators.
3.5 35 IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation. 1999;6:724-
3 30 31.
Leakage current (mA)

[10] A Critical Comparison Of Artificial Pollution Test Methods For HV

Charge amplitude (nC)

2.5 25 Insulators. CIGRE Taskforce 33-04. 1979;Electra No 64:117-36.
2 20 [11] Neagu ER, Dias C. Charge injection/extraction at a metal-dielectric
1.5 15 interface: Experimental validation. IEEE Electrical Insulation Magazine.
2009;25:15-22.
1 10 [12] Fukuma M, Fukunaga K, Maeno T. Space Charge Dynamics in LDPE
0.5 5 Films Immediately before Breakdown. IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics
and Electrical Insulation, . 2001;8:304-6.
0 0
[13] N. A. Othman, M. A. M. Piah, Z. Adzis, Ahmad H. Measurement of
CLEAN LIGHT MEDIUM HEAVY
Surface Charge Distribution on Glass Insulator using Steel Mesh. IEEE
Contamination Level
International Conference on Power and Energy (PECon). Kuching,
Sarawak2014.
LC Amplitude Charge amplitude
[14] Kumada A, Okabe S. Charge distribution measurement on a truncated
cone spacer under DC voltage. IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and
Fig. 8. Charge amplitude versus leakage current amplitude Electrical Insulation. 2004;11:929-38.

IV. CONCLUSION
The present article provides leakage current and trapped
charge characteristics for contaminated glass insulator string.
Based on the presented results, it is evident that the magnitude
of LC flowing through the string insulator increases as the
contamination level is increased. However, the amplitude of
trapped charges decreases with higher contamination levels.
The ability to correlate the flow of LC and the trapped charge
distribution could be used to monitor the condition of the
insulator while energized and in service so that immediate
action can be taken.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Universiti Teknologi
Malaysia (UTM), for the use of facilities and by awarding a
research grants under vote 01H69, 03H86 and 4L133 from the
Research Management Centre UTM, and Malaysia Ministry of
Education (MOE).
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