THE EFFECT OF THERMAL CHARACTERISTICS OF POWER LINE INSULATORS ON POLLUTION PERFORMANCE

WL Vosloo and JP Holtzhausen

Eskom / University of Stellenbosch, South Africa

ABSTRACT Power line insulators are heated by the sun and cool down during the night. The heating and cooling characteristics depend on the insulator material. The wetting of polluted insulators depends on various factors, such as humidity, ambient temperature and the temperature of the insulator surface. In this paper this phenomenon is investigated in the laboratory and on site for insulators made of various materials. 1. INTRODUCTION Power line insulator pollution flashover is usually preceded by the flow of appreciable leakage current. The magnitude of the leakage current depends on the accumulated pollution on the insulator material and the ambient wetting of the pollution layer on the insulator surface. The principal wetting processes are spray wetting, adsorption of moisture from ambient air and condensation. Spray wetting can occur any time of day or night while adsorption depends on the relative humidity of the air and the insulator temperature. While adsorption occurs at a constant temperature, the insulator surface must be cooler than the ambient air for condensation to occur. Riquel et al [1] analysed the condensation process and pointed out that, due to the thermal inertia of an insulator, the insulator temperature may lag behind ambient temperature when the ambient temperature changes. At sunrise, in particular, the insulator is colder than the surrounding air. Even at a relative humidity of less than 100% the saturation level may be reached in a thin layer of air in contact with the colder insulator. They found that in the case of a clean insulator significant wetting can take place in the case of a steep ambient temperature rise. In the case of polluted insulators the phenomenon could not be demonstrated, possibly due to joule heating by the flow of current in the damp pollution layer. In the case of polluted insulators the humidity is maintained by the saturation value of the polluting salts. The heating and cooling of insulators depend on the thermal inertia (time constant) of the insulator. In analogy to a first order electric RC-circuit, the time constant is, as a first approximation, determined by the product: the thermal resistance to the heat flow from the insulator to ambient and the heat capacity of the insulator. The heat capacity of the insulator is the product of the specific heat c (in J /( kg K)) and the mass (kg) of the insulator. The thermal resistance is inversely proportional to the thermal conductivity k (in W/(m K))

of the material. The thermal time constant is therefore proportional to dc/k, called the relative thermal time constant index , d (kg/m3 ) being the mass density of the material. In practice heating and cooling curves are more complex and deviate from the single exponential curve as assumed in this explanation. A sum of various exponential terms having different time constants are usually required for accurate modelling [2]. Cooling also takes place due to radiation and convection. Radiation is determined by the factor (T4 -T0 4 ) e, where e is the emissivity (e=1 for a perfect black body), T and T0 being the insulator and ambient temperatures respectively[2]. The emissivity also depends on the colour of the insulator but published values are of the same order for all the insulators and it is not considered a crucial factor. The effects of convection are assumed to be common to all insulators. The properties are summarised for a few relevant materials in Table 1, together with estimated values for time constant index. Porcelain has the lowest time constant. Table 1: Typical properties of some materials Material d c k e dc/k kg /m3 J/(kg- K ) W/(m K) s/m2 Water 1 4186 0.6 0.67 2512 Porcelain 4 800 3 0.92 1067 Rubber 2 1810 0.6 0.95 6033 Epoxy 3 1300 0.8 0.9 4875 Ahmed and Singer presented a mathematical electrothermal model for dry-band formation on a polluted cylinder, using a boundary element method [3]. Their analysis show that the thermal insulation capacity has a large effect on the insulator performance under polluted conditions. In this work the relative heating and cooling characteristics of insulators made of various materials are investigated in the laboratory. The leakage current performance of a porcelain insulator is also evaluated at a coastal site. 2. LABORATORY INVESTIGATION: To simulate the temperature rise of various 22 kV insulators due to solar heating the insulators were suspended from a metal support frame with bimetallic thermocouples were connected to the bottom of the sheds. The insulators all had almost identical dimensions and shape but were made from different materials as detailed in Table 2. The test insulators were heated, in wind-free,

indoor, laboratory conditions, by an artificial white light, from room temperature (24 C) until the last insulator reached 36 C. The insulator-surface temperature readings are shown for one-minute intervals in Figure1. Table 2: Details of test insulators Insulator Description 1S HTV silicone rubber composite insulator 2E EPDM rubber composite insulator 3P Porcelain insulator 4C Similar to 3P but covered with a RTV silicone rubber coating 5A Cast cycloaliphatic epoxy resin insulator
64 62 60 58 56 54 52

Colour Dark grey Dark grey Brown Light grey Beige

The results in Figure 1 show that the porcelain insulator (3P) heats faster than the others and also reaches the highest temperature. The HTV SR (1S) and EPDM (2E) insulators tend to heat at the same rate and to the same end value, closely followed by the cycloaliphatic insulator. The RTV SR-coated insulator takes the longest time to heat and has a far lower final value. In another test, test insulators 1S, 2E, 3P, 4C and 5A were heated by an artificial white light source to 38 C. The one-minute interval, insulator-surface temperature readings, taken while the insulators cooled down naturally (in wind-free, indoor, laboratory conditions) to room temperature (16 C), are shown in Figure 2. The results in Figure 2 show that the RTV SR-coated insulator takes the longest time to cool and has a far higher final value than the other test insulators.

1S 2E 3P 4C 5A

Temperature (C)

50 48 46 44 42 40 38 36 34 32 30 28 26 24 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16

Time (min) Figure 1: Measured heating curves of the test insulators, using artificial white light
38 36 34 32 30

1S 2E 3P 4C 5A

Temperature (C)

28 26 24 22 20 18 16 14 12 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

90

Time (min) Figure 2: Measured cooling curves of the test insulators from an initial temperature of 38 C

3. SITE MEASUREMENTS The effects of solar radiation and the surrounding environment on the heating of the test insulators were investigated by monitoring the material temperature on the non-energised test insulators 1S, 2E, 3P, 4C and 5A installed at KIPTS. This was done using bimetallic thermocouples connected to the top sheds. Although the actual heating of the insulator surface is mainly effected by the infra-red content of the solar radiation, the UV-B radiation levels were monitored as part of a material ageing investigation. Although not directly contributing to the heating, the UV-B levels are
32 30 28 26

used as an indication of solar intensity. Figure 3 shows the insulator surface temperature, ambient temperature and UV-B solar radiation readings at fifteenminute intervals. The effect of solar radiation on the wetting of insulator 3P when heated and then cooled in a natural environment is illustrated in Figure 4. The insulator surface temperature, ambient and dew point temperature, UV-B solar radiation, relative humidity, and leakage current readings are shown at fifteen-minute intervals. The dew point temperature was calculated from the measured relative humidity and temperature measurements.
300

1S 2E 3P
200 250

Temperature (C)

24 22 20 18 16 14 12 10 8 06:00 06:30

5A Ambient UVB
100 150

50

0 07:00 07:30 08:00 08:30 09:00 09:30 10:00 10:30 11:00 11:30 12:00 12:30 13:00 13:30 14:00 14:30 15:00 15:30 16:00 16:30 17:00 17:30 18:00

Time of Day
Figure 3: Surface temperature of the various test insulators exposed to the environment at a coastal site
32 30 28 26 320

3P-Temp Dew Point Ambient 3P-Current UVB RH

Current (mA), Temp (C)

22 20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6

220 200 180 160 140 120 100 80 60

WET
4 2 0 6:00 6:30 7:00 7:30 8:00 8:30 9:00 9:30 10:00 10:30 11:00 11:30 12:00

DRY

WET
40 20 0

12:30

13:00

13:30

14:00

14:30

15:00

15:30

16:00

16:30

17:00

17:30

Time of Day Figure 4: Insulator 3P, exposed to the natural environment at a coastal site: leakage current and the weather parameters.

18:00

RH(%), UVB (uW/cm)

24

UVB (uW/cm)
300 280 260 240

4C

4. DISCUSSION OF THE RESULTS From the laboratory measurements can be concluded that the RTV SR-coated insulator (4C) takes longer to heat up and to cool down than the other polymeric test insulators. The test insulator temperatures in Figure 3 show good correlation with the solar radiation and a direct correlation with the ambient temperature, though the insulator-surface temperature readings were much higher than the ambient temperature readings. The difference in rate of heating of the test insulator materials corresponds to the laboratory measurements shown in Figure 3. It can therefore be concluded that solar radiation heats the insulator surface to a temperature higher than ambient on all the test insulators under consideration. The porcelain test insulator (3P) is heated to the highest temperature and the RTV SR-coated porcelain insulator (4C) to the lowest, however still well above ambient. The heating and cooling curves are consistent with the thermal time constants calculated in Table 1. Due to the fact that the heating and cooling phenomena are more complex than the single time constant model, it is not possible to verify the measurements, using simple calculations. The different heating and cooling profiles could also possibly be due to the colour of the insulators. The leakage current will only be present when critical wetting of the insulator pollution layer has occurred, resulting in an electrolytic conducting layer. It is normally expected that when a relative humidity (RH) level of 75% and above is present, critical wetting should occur, resulting in a leakage current. However, from the results in Figure 4 it is seen that even though the RH is above 75%, critical wetting does not occur during the day when UV-B solar radiation increases the insulator surface temperature above the dew point temperature. These results (in Figure 4) show that solar radiation has an effect on the wetting of the test insulators and the resulting leakage currents. It is therefore assumed that the leakage current levels during the daytime are normally much lower than during the night, mainly due to solar radiation heating of the test insulator surface. This will not be true when it rains or when strong moisture-carrying winds or mist/fog prevail during the daytime. Leakage current monitoring at Koeberg Insulator Pollution Test Station (KIPTS) on identically profiled insulators showed that the coated porcelain insulator (4C) had much lower leakage currents than the silicone rubber insulator (1S) [4]. One explanation is that the coated insulator used RTV silicone rubber, containing a higher percentage low molecular weight oils whereas insulator 1S employed HTV silicone rubber. Another factor to be considered is that the bulk of the coated insulator consists of porcelain. The heat capacity would therefore be similar to that of porcelain but the heat conduction and radiation properties would be determined by the silicone rubber coating, resulting in a longer thermal time constant. This last effect was confirmed by the laboratory heating and cooling experiments and also by

the measurement of the insulator surface temperatures on non-energised insulators at an actual coastal site. It is interesting to note that the surface temperatures of all insulators were higher than the ambient temperature, with the porcelain insulator the hottest and the coated porcelain insulator the coolest. 5. CONCLUSIONS The constituent materials of insulators have a definite effect on the heating and cooling characteristics of the insulators. This was demonstrated by surface temperature measurements in the laboratory and on site. Using the temperature measurements on a porcelain insulator, it was shown that leakage current flow commences when the dew point temperature drops below the ambient temperature. 6. [1] REFERENCES: Riquel, G.: Spangenberg E., Mirabel P., Saison, J.Y. :Wetting Processes of Pollution Layer on High Voltage Glass Insulators, Proceeding of the 9th International Conference on High Voltage Engineering, (Graz University of Technology), September 1995, pp. 3190-(1-4). Weedy, B. M: Electric Power Systems, John Wiley & Sons, Bristol, 1979, pp 425 - 455. Ahmed, A., Singer, H.:Dry-band Formation on Polluted High-voltage Insulators Influenced by Thermal Insulator Capacity, Proceeding of the 12 th International Conference on High Voltage Engineering, India, September 2001, pp. 727 - 730. Holtzhausen, J. P.. Vosloo, W.L.: The Leakage Current Performance under severe coastal pollution conditions of identically shaped Insulators of different materials, Proceeding of the 12 th International Conference on High Voltage Engineering, India, September 2001, pp. 691 - 694.

[2]

[3]

[4]

7. AUTHORS: Principal Author: Wallace Vosloo holds PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Stellenbosch At present he is Chief Consultant (Insulators) for Eskom, TSI. Co-author: Koos Holtzhausen holds a PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Stellenbosch. He is a retired Senior Lecturer from the University of Stellenbosch and is presently employed under contract to do research in High Voltage Engineering at the same University. Presenter: The paper is presented by Wallace Vosloo.