ARC GUIDED PROTECTION

DEVICES

AISHWARYA RAVI

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 OVERVIEW

 1. INTRODUCTION

 2. TYPES OF CONDUCTORS

 3. COVERED CONDUCTORS

 4. LIGHTNING BREAKAGE OF COVERED CONDUCTORS

 5. LIGHTNING PROTECTION : MAIN METHODS

 6. ARC GUIDED PROTECTION

 7. VARIOUS TYPES OF PROTECTION DEVICES

 8. TESTS CONDUCTED ON THESE DEVICES

 9. CONCLUSION

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 INTRODUCTION

 Covered conductors used on overhead distribution lines are very

easily broken by short-circuit arcs caused by direct lightning strokes
or lightning induced over voltages. The breakage of overhead
covered conductors on distribution lines becomes a challenge as the
application of covered conductors increases on distribution lines.
Based on various methodologies and devices developed to avoid the
covered conductor breakage in the world, novel arc-guided devices,
including arcing protection hardware with barbs, clamping post
composite insulator, and barb electrode clamping post
porcelain/composite insulator are presented in this paper.
Experimental results are also presented to validate these new
developed devices. Devices based on the developed technologies
have been widely applied on the power grids in China successfully.

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 TYPES OF CONDUCTORS

 For medium voltage overhead transmission, Bare Wires,

Covered Conductors and Universal Cables may be used.

 Bare conductor networks are suitable for most common

conductors. Bare conductor lines provides a simple and
economic system for line erection. They are easy to install
and have long service life in extremely hard climatic
conditions.

 An overhead line with bare conductors insulated by air is

typically less costly than a cable with insulated conductors.
A more common approach is "covered" line wire. It is treated
as bare cable, but often is safer for wildlife.

 Universal cables can be installed in demanding conditions

(like cold and snow, as well as heat and humidity)
underground, in water or in air.

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 COVERED CONDUCTORS
 While overhead lines are usually bare conductors, rarely overhead
insulated cables are used, usually for short distances (less than a
kilometer). Insulated cables can be directly fastened to structures
without insulating supports.

 Covered conductors are plastic covered overhead conductors without

metal sheaths. They were developed to improve the reliability of the
distribution and transfer of electricity.

 The plastic covering prevents interruptions, or outages, due to

collisions or momentary contact with a foreign object. Due to its
coating, faults caused by snow and ice falling from trees have been
almost completely eliminated.

 According to statistics, the failure rate has diminished from 4.5

faults/100 km per annum for bare conductors, to 0.9 faults/100 km
per annum for covered conductors.

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 LIGHTNING BREAKAGE OF COVERED CONDUCTORS

 The biggest problem faced by

covered conductors : they may be
broken by lightning flash. The
breakage may threat the stability of
power supply and result in severe
public safety issues. Once covered
conductors are broken, the whole
system may take hours to couple of
days to be recovered.

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 LIGHTNING PROTECTION: MAIN METHODS

TYPICAL METHODS ARE :

 Installing protection devices

 Increasing the insulation level/improving the insulation structure

 Partially stripping the insulation layer

PROTECTION DEVICES ARE MAINLY CLASSIFIED INTO:

 Arc-guided protection devices

 Surge arrestors with series gap

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 ARC GUIDED METHODS

The mechanism of the arc-guided protection devices is that an AC

power frequency arc can be guided from the covered conductor to a
special metal electrode to prevent the covered conductor from being
burnt and broken, and the arc burns on the special metal electrode
with large size to prevent burning.

ARC GUIDED PROTECTION DEVICES:

 Arcing protection hardware with barbs

 Clamping post composite insulator

 Barb electrode clamping post (porcelain/composite insulator)

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 ARCING PROTECTION
WITH BARBS

The arcing protection hardware

with barbs consists of high
voltage electrode and low
voltage electrode, as shown in
Fig. The high voltage electrode
is connected with the inner
aluminium stranded conductor
of the covered conductor
through the teeth of the barb by
pressure and leads out the high
voltage, and thus the arc root
would occur on this high
voltage electrode rather than on
the covered conductor.

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MECHANISM :

 The covered conductors can be protected from being burnt down.

The high voltage and low voltage electrodes form two gaps: Gap G1
is to make all lightning flashovers occur there, and Gap is to make
the power frequency arcs remain there burning. After the flashover
occurs at Gap G1, the following power frequency arc at Gap would
be driven by a magnetic force moving from Gap G1 to Gap G2
quickly.
 Since the direction of the magnetic force is always from Gap G1 to
Gap G2 , the power frequency arc would remain at Gap G2 to burn
till trip-out. Consequently, the covered conductors are well
protected.

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CLAMPING POST COMPOSITE INSULATOR

The clamping post composite

insulator, as shown in Fig,
consists of composite post insulator,
high voltage electrode, and
insulation hood. The composite post
insulator has a diameter of
24 mm and a height of 250 mm. It
includes four sheds with the
same diameter of 80 mm and the
distance between two sheds is
50 mm, which satisfies the minimum
dry arcing distance is not
less than 155 mm and the creepage
distance of the composite
post insulator is larger than 2.5 cm/kV.

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 BARB ELECTRODE CLAMPING POST
 The barb electrode clamping post
porcelain/composite insulator is developed
combining the design ideas of clamping post
composite insulator and arcing protection
hardware with barbs.
 It has the advantages of both products.
 Fig. gives the structure of this type of
insulator. The barb electrode has the structure
of two half-cylinder and connects with the
inner conductor closely through the teeth of
the barb.
 The high voltage is led from the barb
electrode to the high voltage electrode of the
insulator through the insulated lead wire
which has enough capacity to flow high
current. Thus the insulation layer of conductor
does not need to be stripped and keeps
perfect, this is safer to the covered conductor.

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 TESTS CONDUCTED

In order to validate the effectiveness of the arc protection hardware,

different experiments are carried out :

 Lightning impulse flash over test

 Power frequency arc test

 Compression force test

 Heat stability test

( The statistics used in the following explanations refers to tests

carried out in China Electric Power Research Institute.)

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 LIGHTNING IMPULSE FLASH OVER TEST

 The purpose of this test is to validate

whether all the lightning impulse
flashovers occur at the gap between the
high and the low voltage electrodes.
 For different ranks of conductors, three
different kinds of post insulators, namely
P20, P15, and PS15, and installing arcing
protection hardware in different phases,
the experimental results show that all the
lightning impulse flashovers in different
cases occur at the Gap , as shown in Fig.
 In addition the gaps and should be
longer than a certain value so as to
ensure the gaps are not broken down by
switching impulses.

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 POWER FREQUENCY ARC TEST

 It is to validate whether the power frequency arc could keep burning

at the gap between the high and low voltage electrodes, whether the
electrodes could withstand the burning of the arcs, and whether the
conductor could be protected well.

 The experimental results show that the power frequency arc was
dragged apart from the insulator, and was able to keep burning at
the gap between the high and the low voltage electrodes.

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 COMPRESSION FORCE TEST

 If the compression force on the high voltage electrode of the arcing

protection hardware is small, the contact between the high voltage
electrode and the strand conductor inside the covered conductor is
not good.

 So the contact resistance between them is high, when a high current

flows through this contact region, a large amount of heat generated
in this contact region would cause the aluminium conductor inside
the covered conductor being melt down.

 This test is conducted to determine the relationship between the

contact resistance and the compression force on the high voltage
electrode.

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 HEAT STABILITY TEST

 The test is to validate the capacity of current flowing through the contact region
between the high voltage electrode and covered conductor.

 Combining with the compression force test for different types of hardwares, the
heat stability test validates that under the commended pressure moment at which
the high voltage electrode can closely contact with the conductor and pass through
the rated short-time withstand current test.

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RESULTS OF TESTS

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 CONCLUSION

In order to prevent breakage of covered conductors on distribution

lines caused by lightning strokes, various measures and devices with
different characteristics and functions have been developed, which
are classified into three categories:

 Category I: adding protection device and shield wire,

 Category II: partially stripping the insulation layer of the cable

conductors, and

 Category III: increasing the insulation level or improving the

insulation structure.

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 CONCLUSION [contd]

The functions of all of these methods against lightning breakage of

cable conductors can be classified into two classes:

 The functions of the category I and category III are to prevent

forming the power frequency arc after lightning impulse flashover
and then blocking the breakage of the covered conductor, and these
methods can be called an “arc-blocked” method.

 The function of the category II is to transfer the burning point of arc

root from the conductor to an additional high-voltage electrode with
large size against the conductor burning down, and these methods
can be called “arc-guided” methods.

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 REFERENCES

 “Development of Arc-Guided Protection Devices Against Lightning

Breakage of Covered Conductors on Distribution Lines”
- Weijiang Chen, Shanqiang Gu, Jinliang He, Fellow, IEEE, and Bin Yin
[IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 25, NO. 1, JANUARY
2010]

 “Discussions on measures against lightning breakage of covered

conductors on distribution lines”
- J. L. He, S. Q. Gu, S. M. Chen, R. Zeng, and W. J. Chen [IEEE
TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 23, NO. 2, APRIL 2008]

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THANK YOU

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