2011 Electrical Insulation Conference, Annapolis, Maryland, 5 to 8 June 2011
Implementation of statistical principles to reflect the
long term performance of composite insulators
Antonios Tzimas and Simon M. Rowland
School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
The University of Manchester
Manchester, M13 9PL, UK
Antonios.Tzimas@manchester.ac.uk
Abstract—There are numerous advantages of polymeric
composite insulators over the traditional ceramic ones. However
composite insulators, being comprised of organic elements, age
more rapidly over time. Environmental conditions control both
the manner in which composite insulators age, and the effective
stresses that insulator strings are exposed to in service. The
current work presents a statistical methodology to reflect the
reliability of a network consisting of composite insulators. This
accounts for the working environment and its impact on both the
ageing of the insulator and risk of flashover. This is achieved by
combining previously established statistical dimensioning
principles according to the site’s pollution severity and a four-
state Markov ageing model. The risk of flashover is estimated
according to the site’s pollution severity using statistical
principles. Then by choosing appropriate transition probabilities
between the states of Markov’s ageing process the population of
insulators at risk of flashover because of ageing is estimated. The
combination of the risk of flashover due to the pollution severity
and due to ageing of the insulators results in an estimation of risk
of flashover for a given number of insulators in a given point in
time. The resulting forecast of flashover performance could be
used to assist asset management decisions as well as optimising
condition monitoring of composite insulators.
Keywords-component; outdoor insulators; Markov, risk of
flashover; statistical methodology; asset management; condition
monitoring
I. INTRODUCTION
Polymeric composite insulators have been replacing the
traditional glass and ceramic ones over the last thirty years.
Composite insulators are the preferred insulators in polluted
environments because of their intrinsic property of
hydrophobicity and its short term recoverability [1]. Thus, their
use reduces the need for maintenance washing and subsequent
reoccurring running costs. There also other advantages due to
their light weight, such as easy of transportation and
installation. Despite their numerous advantages, polymeric
composite insulator surfaces, being comprised of organic
material, do age over time [2]. The manner in which composite
insulators age is subject to the long term environmental
conditions that govern the strength of the stresses that the
insulators strings are exposed to in service [3]. For example,
near coastal areas there is more saline pollution than inland
areas. Short-term environmental fluctuations and the insulator’s
surface condition also control the probability of flashover.
The authors would like to acknowledge National Grid for their support of this
research.
978-1-4577-0276-1/11/$26.00
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As there is no control of the environmental conditions in
which composite insulators are installed; they are designed to
have a sufficient creepage distance to reduce the flashover
likelihood in severe polluted environments to an acceptable
level. This is achieved by reducing the maximum surface
electrical stresses and leakage currents on wet and polluted
insulators by raising the surface resistance of the whole unit.
Nevertheless, in the design phase it is impossible to account for
the long term impact of the occurrence of all extreme
environmental conditions such as wetting, pollution, wind,
thermal and UV cycling all of which may accelerate the ageing
of the insulator and reduce its flashover performance. As the
ageing rate of composite insulators is dependent on their
natural environmental as well as electrical stresses to which
they are exposed, inspection and condition monitoring of
composite insulators is advised. In order to keep the cost of
inspection and condition monitoring to the minimum,
intelligent decisions and asset management policies need to be
applied. The focus of this work is to assist asset management
decisions by reflecting statistically the long term flashover
performance of composite insulators according to the site
severity. This is achieved by combining established statistical
dimensioning principles [4] according to the site’s pollution
severity and a four-state Markov ageing model [5].
II. STATISTICAL RISK ANALYSIS MODEL
The statistical model for risk of flashover analysis of
composite insulators is carried out by combining previously
published statistical dimensioning principles with a Markov
ageing model. The statistical dimensioning principles are used
to define the insulators’ environment in terms of the pollution
severity, measured in Equivalent Salt Deposit Density (ESDD)
[6]. The risk of flashover due to the design of an insulator and
pollution severity for a certain environment is estimated using
the statistical dimensioning principles. The ageing of the
insulator is included in the statistical model by utilizing a four-
state Markov ageing model. The performance of individual
insulators is combined to develop a model of the total system.
In this case the statistical analysis is carried out for systems in
two distinct environments: an inland low pollution region and
a coastal situation with high pollution severity.
A. Statistical dimensioning principles
The principles developed by Engelbrecht et al [4] to design
insulators under polluted conditions are adopted in this work.
97
 1.0
Strength PA(γ) 100 TABLE I. PARAMETERS USED TO MODEL THE TWO ENVIRONMENTS
STATISTICALLY USING EQUATION (1) ADOPTED FROM [8].

Enviromental Environment ESDD50 Std. deviation of Statistical severity

Strength: Probability of flashover

stress f(γ) (mg/cm2) ln(ESDD) σ (γs2,mg/cm2)
Stress: Density of occurence

Inland 0.0005 0.52 0.0014

Coastal 0.072 0.73 0.32

0.5 50
for n the truncation parameter n = 2.5 and c = 0.2 adopted from
f(γ)xPA(γ) [4]. k is the shape parameter and is estimated from the
following expression:
Risk of flashover
1.38
k= (4)
ln[n (n − 1)]
0.0 0
1E-3 0.01 0.1 1 10 100 A and α are experimental constants derived in [9] by fitting the
Pollution severity (γ)
following expression:
Figure 1. Stress/strength concept for calculation of risk for pollution flashover
U 50 (γ )
The main equations and ideas required for this paper are = Aγ −α (5)
included below for clarity and more details can be found in [4]. l
The pollution severity of the insulators’ environment in where: γ0 is the truncation pollution severity,
service can be described by a log-Normal-distribution function l is the axial length of the insulator.
with the following form [7]: The truncation severity is expressed in terms of the 50%
⎧⎪ 1 ⎛ log γ − log μ ⎞ 2 ⎫⎪ flashover probability of pollution severity, γ50 as follows:
⎨− ⎜ ⎟ ⎬
1 ⎪⎩ 2 ⎝ σ ⎠ ⎪⎭
f (γ ) = e (1) γ 0 = γ 50 (1 − nc )1 α (6)
σ 2π
for n=2.5 and c=0.084 calculated from laboratory test results in
where: γ is the pollution severity ESDD mg/cm2; [4].
σ is the Std. deviation of ln(ESDD);
The γ50 for artificially polluted insulators, i.e. in the
μ is the ESDD50 of the insulation environment.
laboratory, can be calculated from equation (5) by equating U50
A cumulative distribution function PA(γ) describing the to the continuous operating voltage Uc:
strength of the insulation, i.e. the probability of flashover as a
function of the pollution severity, γ, is used to describe the Al
impact of pollution see Fig. 1. This data normally comes from γ 50 = α (7)
laboratory tests, service experience or field tests. Here, the Uc
information is adopted from another study [8] where data was
And for the in-service naturally polluted insulators the 50%
collected for environments with different pollution severities.
pollution severity γ50n can be derived from equation (6) and (7)
In order to model an inland environment, the statistical
as follows:
parameters obtained from the ESDD measurements in Ludvika
an inland city of Sweden are adopted. The coastal environment
is represented by adopting the statistical parameters obtained Al (1 − nca )
γ 50 n = α (8)
for Kelso near the Scottish coast, see Table 1. A derivative of U c (1 − ncn )
the three parameter Weibull distribution function, PA(γ), is used
to describe the strength of a given insulator that represents the The two functions f(γ) and PA(γ) are subsequently
flashover probability with the following form, derived in [4]: multiplied to give the probability density for flashover, and the
area under this curve expresses the risk for flashover during a
⎧ ⎡ α ⎤k ⎫
⎪1 ⎛ γ ⎞ ⎪ pollution event for one insulator:
−⎨ ⎢ ⎜⎜ ⎟⎟ −1⎥ ⎬
⎪ β ⎢⎣ ⎝ γ 0 ⎠ ⎥ ⎪
⎦ ∞
PA (γ ) = 1 − e ⎩ ⎭
(2)

where the subscript A denotes the insulator type and β is the

RA = ∫ f (γ ) P (γ )dγ
γ0
A (9)

scale parameter estimated from the following expression:

RA is then the probability of one insulator of type A in an
nc environment characterized by f(γ) flashing over. The insulator’s
β= (3) performance is characterized by PA(γ). Equation (9) can be
(1− nc )(ln 2 )1 k extended to consider the probability of one flashover event
within a system containing n insulators, all of which are in the
same environment:

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 Pn (γ ) = 1 − [1 − R A ] The transitions between adjacent states are unidirectional.
n ¾
(10)
No recovery is allowed. Clearly if natural hydrophobicity
The implicit assumption is made that the insulator is in the recovery is to be modeled this might be relaxed allowing a
environment for a time long enough to experience a complete finite P32 probability. Maintenance such as washing would
range of environments making up the probability density also allow such a transition.
function f(γ). In other words this analysis is only suitable for ¾ When the insulators turned into the “weathered” state, they
long periods of time so that each period of time is equivalent. degrade according to the transition probabilities shown in
Such a cycle might be a year long, or it might represent shorter Table II for inland and coastal environments.
periods of extreme conditions which occur repeatedly during a
year. If the number of pollution events per year, N, is known TABLE II. TRANSITION PROBABILITIES BETWEEN STATES.
(e.g. salt storms in coastal areas) the likelihood of a flashover Transition Inland Coastal
per year can be calculated by the following expression: Probabilities Environment Environment
P23 0.04 0.06
R year (γ ) = 1 − [1 − Pn (γ )]
N P34 0.03 0.05
(11)

so that Table II reflects that the rate of ageing, and so the Markov
transition rates, depend upon the working environment. At this
R year (γ ) = 1 − [1 − R A ]
Nn
(12) stage of research the transition probabilities are indicative
values to illustrate the model. In this exercise we have
Showing the equivalence of longer times and having more considered two different situations: insulators in an inland low
insulators under test. pollution environment and insulators in a coastal, high
B. The ageing process model pollution environment. Clearly more granularity could be
applied to this analysis. Fig. 3 shows the prediction of
The Markov model [5] is used to estimate the population of insulators population in each state for an inland environment
insulators that are in a pre-defined aged state each year: see for 10, 20 and 40 years in service. It is observed that transition
Fig. 2. The four-state Markov ageing model is used to reflect to an “At Risk” state has occurred slowly in the
statistically the ageing of composite insulators. The four states inland environment. On the other hand ageing in a coastal
of the insulator’s lifetime are defined according to the asset environment is more aggressive, hence the transition
management framework presented in [3] as one ‘New’ and probabilities reflect that, and the population of at risk insulators
three aged states; ‘Weathered’, ‘Mature’ and ‘At Risk’, see increases faster, see Fig. 4.
Fig. 2. The duration of each Markov state is defined as follows:
¾ New: 0-3 years, Fig. 5 shows in more detail how the population of insulators
moves from one state to another over time for a coastal
¾ Weathered: 3-tw years,
environment. It can be seen that the rate of change at long
¾ Mature: tw-tm years and times is low, and in fact the initial three-year deterministic
¾ At Risk: tm-tR years. assumption becomes much less relevant than the other
transition probabilities as time progresses.

1.0
Proportion of insulators ageing state

Aged states 0.8

Figure 2. The four state ageing process adopted from [5] and [3] to apply
on composite insulation ageing. One New and three aged states. 0.6
Times, tw, tm and tR, are stochastically distributed. An
insulator is classified into one of the above states depending 0.4
upon the limits that define each state by a property that it is
chosen to measure ageing. For outdoor insulator properties
Insulation State
such as the hydrophobicity, leakage current measurements, 0.2 At Risk
roughness and oxidative state could be used to characterize Mature
ageing. The following assumptions are used to apply Markov’s Weathered
ageing model: 0.0
10 year 20 years 40 years
¾ The transition from ‘New’ to ‘Weathered’ occurs after three Time in service
years for the whole insulation population. Thus, P12=0 for
Figure 3. Prediction of insulators ageing state after 10, 20 and 40 years in
the first three years and P12=1 in the fourth year. This service under an inland environment using Markov’s model.
assumption is a result of experience in which early ageing
appears relatively deterministic, and is controlled largely by
the natural environment such as UV radiation.

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 1.0 D. Aged states and U50
In order to practically combine the statistical dimensioning
Proportion of insulators ageing state

principles with the Markov model, the impact of “New” as well

0.8 as “Aged” states should be reflected in the statistical
methodology. In the following the “Aged” state includes the
population of insulators that is derived from the three
0.6 previously defined “Aged” states; “Weathered”, “Mature” and
“At Risk” because of limited data. Two different values of the
experimental parameter α in equation (5) are used to reflect the
0.4 “New” and “Aged” states. For the “New” state the value is
adopted from an experimental study carried out in [9], see
At Risk Table III, and for the “Aged” state the value of α is reduced to
0.2 Mature 0.1 in order to model a reduced flashover performance that is
Weathered expected on aged insulators. The effect that the reduction of α
has on the 50% probability of flashover as a function of the
0.0 pollution severity is illustrated in Fig. 6.
10 year 20 years 40 years
Time in service Table IV shows the different values used to plot the
Figure 4. Prediction of insulators ageing state after 10, 20 and 40 years in
flashover probability, P(γ) equation (2), according to the
service under a coastal environment using Markov’s model. pollution severity, inland and coastal, for “New” and “Aged”
states.
1.0
140
State 1 New
Probability distribution of insulators

State 2 Weathered
State 3 Mature 120 New state U50(γ); α = 0.136
State 4 At Risk Aged state U50(γ); α = 0.1
Flashover stress kV/m
100

80
0.5

60 Service stress at 420kV

40 U 50 (γ )
= Aγ −α
l
20

0.0 0
0 10 20 30 40 50
Years 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5
2
Pollution Severity mg/cm
Figure 5. Probabilty distribution of composite insulators using the Markov Figure 6. The change in U50 as a function of pollution severity for two
model for a coastal environment. different values of α; one describing the ‘new state’ (α=0.136) and a second
value describing the ‘aged state’ (α=0.1).
C. Implementation Principles
TABLE III. EXPERIMENTAL PARAMETERS ADOPTED FROM A GLASS
For any network, this analysis requires as the initial process INSULATOR STRING STUDY [9].
determination of the geographic regions and their associated
A α U50 (kV) σ (kV)
Markov transitions. Each region is treated separately and then
68.5 0.136 252 14
combined as a last step. For each region we then have a set of
Markov probabilities Pij, and a pollution distribution function TABLE IV. PARAMETERS USED TO PLOT THE STRENGTH OF THE
f(γ). Perhaps one day research will be able to derive the Pij from INSULATOR USING EQUATION (2).
f(γ) since the latter determines the former. The likelihood of Parameters that change Parameters that are
flashover of the insulators in each Markov state can be with ageing not affected by ageing
calculated. However to simplify the situation we might assume
Insulator γ0 α β Weibull k Weibull
that network performance is dominated by the insulators in the state truncation experimental scale shape
‘At Risk’ state. In other words the likelihood of flashover is value parameter parameter parameter
negligible in other states. This would in fact determine how the
New 0.0502 0.136
‘At Risk’ group is defined. Thus the proportion of insulators in 1.1453 2.7
state ‘At Risk’ decides the performance of the whole system, Aged 0.017 0.1
and only the population of insulators in that state needs to be
considered. As a consequence only the flashover likelihood of
this group PAt Risk(γ) is required.

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 III. STATISTICAL ESTIMATION OF FLASHOVER RATE OF A IV. CONCLUSIONS
NETWORK A statistical methodology has been presented that can be
In this section the risk of flashover estimated using the used as a tool to estimate the risk of flashover of networks of
statistical dimensioning principles for inland and coastal composite outdoor insulators. Firstly, the statistical
environments is combined with the population of insulators that methodology proposed utilises statistical principles that take
belong to the ‘At Risk’ state to estimate the probability of the into account the design of insulators according to the pollution
failure rate of the insulator strings. severity in service conditions. Secondly, it uses a Markov
model to reflect statistically the ageing population of composite
The risk of flashover per year of an individual insulator, insulators. Finally, the statistical methodology proposed
Pyear in a certain environment can be multiplied with the combines the two statistical models to estimate the risk of
proportion of insulators “At Risk” state and provide an estimate flashover for composite insulators in time under service
of annual flashover events due to the effect of the conditions once the pollution severity of the environment is
environmental stress and ageing of the insulators. known and the transition probabilities of the insulators for the
This method has been used to construct Table V for both Markov model are derived.
inland and coastal environments with twelve pollution events The combination of statistical dimensioning principles with
per year. The risk of flashover over these 12 pollution events the four state ageing processes of Markov’s model could be
per year is estimated using equation (12) and the results for used to assist asset management decisions of composite
both inland and coastal environment are shown in Table VI. It insulation conditioning monitoring and forecast long term
should be noted from Table V and VI that the risk of flashover performance. Further work is needed to substantiate the
for the coastal environment has been estimated using both γ50 validity of the model. This would involve accumulation of data
for artificially polluted as well as naturally polluted insulators on the long term insulation performance under different
using equations (6) and (7) respectively. The risk of flashover environmental service conditions. This could provide a robust
for the inland environment has been estimated only using tool to assist asset management of composite insulators.
equation (6) for artificially polluted insulators.
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Markov model. This is only valid if the “Aged” state estimated
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which might be a hydrophilic surface with solid pollution
coating.

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