Pollution Flashover Characteristics of High-Voltage Outdoor Insulators: Analytical Study

This paper introduces an analytical model of contaminated insulators under critical conditions. The dynamic mathematical model based on the description of the equivalent electrical circuit approach and the criterion for the propagation of discharge has been improved. A few laboratory tests were conducted on practical insulators installed to measure the flashover voltage and determine dynamic arc parameters (A and n). The electric arc constant values are extracted based on the simulation of the experimental results using the genetic algorithm technique with several levels of pollution. The critical parameters, which are the current, length, and resistance of discharge, have been measured and calculated based on the proposed model. The actual results of the proposed models’ voltage were compared with the experimental results and previous research study under various resistance of pollution layers. Statistical analysis based on different coefficients were applied to validate the reliability of the proposed models. The experimental and simulation findings show the insulator's expected performance under various operating conditions per the IEC 5070 Standard.