Electric Power Systems Research 76 (2006) 778785

Performance improvement of 33 kV line-post insulators

in harsh environment
I.A. Metwally a, , A. Al-Maqrashi a , S. Al-Sumry b , S. Al-Harthy b
a

Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, College of Engineering, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman
b Power Systems Department, Petroleum Development Oman (PDO), Oman
Received 20 June 2005; received in revised form 27 October 2005; accepted 30 October 2005
Available online 15 December 2005

Abstract
Comprehensive standard tests were conducted on 33 kV line-post porcelain insulators in order to improve their performance in harsh environment
in comparison to the newly introduced polymeric ones. These tests are the lightning impulse withstand and flashover tests, and the AC artificial
pollution tests. The latter were conducted in a salt-fog chamber. Silicone rubber insulators showed superior performance than adding heat-shrinkable
and wraparound creepage extenders to the existing line-post porcelain insulators or using new polymeric insulators.
2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Line insulators; Leakage current; Flashover; Silicone rubber; Creepage extenders

1. Introduction
Recently, some of Petroleum Development Oman (PDO)
distribution lines which are near the sea side or pass through
highly contaminated areas, have high leakage current leading
to wooden pole fires, insulator fracture and current breaking
problems. All of these abnormalities have caused inadvertent,
where each pole fire causes up to 600 m3 of oil deferment.
All 33 kV distribution lines have line-post porcelain insulators with different designs at a specific creepage distance of
40 mm/kV.
Wooden pole fires can not be attributed to any single factor
but a number of concurrent conditions with insulator contamination as a prerequisite followed by atmospheric conditions
of wind, fog or heavy mist. The leakage currents can generate
enough localized heat to ignite the wood at the point of contact between wood and metal surfaces and start a pole top fire,
especially when pole crossarms and insulators are near or at
the end of their service life. Live-line washing represents one
of the solutions to reduce the leakage current on the insulator

Corresponding author. Tel.: +968 99777512; fax: +968 24413454.

E-mail addresses: metwally@squ.edu.om (I.A. Metwally),
maqrashi@squ.edu.om (A. Al-Maqrashi), Saif.AR.Sumry@pdo.co.om
(S. Al-Sumry), Saif.SH.Harthy@pdo.co.om (S. Al-Harthy).
0378-7796/$ see front matter 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.epsr.2005.10.010

surface and hence the pole fires. The main drawback of a washing approach is, though, establishing the correct timing of the
operation. In addition, washing is not effective in environments
subject to instantaneous polluting conductive mist conditions,
e.g. marine salt fogs.
This paper introduces two possible solutions to reduce the
wooden pole fire in very heavy polluted areas, namely, adding of
creepage extenders to the existing line-post porcelain insulators
or replacing the latter by silicone rubber ones.
2. Adding of silicone-rubber creepage extenders
Creepage distance is the shortest distance on insulating surface that exists between two conductive parts of an insulator with
different potentials. An approach to improve insulators performance is to increase the creepage distance. This can be achieved
by increasing the shed diameter, and therefore the shed projection, with the application of extenders. For example, should the
creepage be increased from, say, 16 mm/kV to 25 mm/kV, then
the insulator has been effectively upgraded from one suited to a
Light pollution category to a Heavy pollution classification
[13].
Creepage extenders are made of true HTV silicone rubber
material with inherent hydrophobic characteristics and tracking,
erosion and UV resistance, and are attached to the insulators by
means of an RTV silicone rubber adhesive. Even uncoated, the

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sheds are capable of operating in the most extreme environments. Creepage extenders increase the flashover performance
of insulators by:
reducing the surface electric stress,
reducing the leakage current and
increasing the electric strength of insulators.
There are two types of creepage extenders, namely, heatshrinkable creepage extenders (HSCEs) and wraparound creepage extenders (WACEs). HSCE and WACE add a nominal of
100 mm and 150 mm to the creepage length, respectively [2].
Generally, it is recommended to increase the existing creepage
distance by at least 20%. Creepage extender does not upgrade
the voltage class of the insulator. The disadvantage of creepage
extenders is that the different surface properties of the ceramic
insulator and the polymer extender can create severe voltage
distortions at the transitions between the materials, resulting in
partial discharges and flashover [13].
3. Replacement of existing porcelain by silicone rubber
insulators
Silicone rubber (SiR) as outdoor insulation material has been
used for more than 25 years with good service experience. Today,
SiR is the most used polymeric material for medium and highvoltage outdoor insulation [4]. After about 11 years of operation
in various polluted areas, SiR insulators removed from 110 kV to
220 kV transmission lines still presents a good hydrophobicity
property [5]. Generally, the hydrophobicity distribution of SiR
insulator is non-uniform. It is found that the local deterioration of
hydrophobicity has close correlation with the local strengthening
of electric field. Water droplets induced low-energy discharge is
a very important reason for the hydrophobicity loss of SiR insulators in service. In order to improve the long-term performance
of SiR insulator, it is better to limit the electric field level near
end-fittings 5 kV/cm.
In general, surface degradation of polymeric insulators is
caused by environmental attack related to weather conditions
and electrical activity. Environmental attack includes thermal
degradation from ambient temperature, ultraviolet induced polymer degradation, acidic attack from acid rain or acid fog, chemical attack from salt contamination, sandblast, etc. Electrical
attack includes partial discharges caused by leakage current, dry
band arcing and corona near the metal fittings. The chemical
structure of the polymer changes by chain scission (depolymerization), oxidation, etc. As the result of these changes, the
polymer may lose elasticity, become brittle and lose the mechanical strength. As well, increased surface roughness or loss of the
polymer matrix could cause loss of surface hydrophobicity and
lead to high leakage current [6].
4. Test results and discussion
This section presents the lab tests. Two types of tests were carried out: (1) standard lightning impulse withstand and flashover
tests according to IEC standards [710] and (2) standard AC arti-

Fig. 1. Test samples of 33 kV line-post insulators(a) A: used porcelain, (b)

B: used porcelain, (c) C: used porcelain, (d) D: used porcelain, (e) E: new SiR,
(f) F: new polymeric, (g) insulator A with two WACEs and (h) insulator C with
two HSCEs.

ficial pollution tests under different pollution severities [11,12].

These tests were conducted on 33 kV line-post insulators of different designs and materials as can be seen in Fig. 1.
First, these insulators were tested under standard withstand
voltage to determine if the insulators pass the test or not. Then,
the 50% impulse flashover voltage tests were done for the insulators to determine the U50% for each insulator. In AC pollution
tests, the same set of insulators were tested inside a salt-fog
chamber (2 m 2 m 2.5 m) with a controlled relative humidity and temperature of 100% and 25 C, and under clean and
polluted conditions to characterize the leakage current versus
applied voltage (IV curves) and to get the AC wet flashover
voltages under different pollution severities.
4.1. Test samples
Fig. 1 shows the 33 kV line-post insulators of different
designs and materials, and with and without CEs. Table 1 gives
details of all samples.
4.2. Standard lightning impulse withstand and ashover
tests
In these tests, all ten stages of the impulse voltage generator were used to generate the lightning impulse voltage
(1.2 s/50 s). This voltage is applied to the insulator top, while
the insulator base is grounded. A capacitive divider is used
to measure the voltage. The voltage waveform was recorded
by a digital storage oscilloscope, where the high voltage was
attenuated by a ratio 6987:1. This test was done in dry/clean
(unpolluted) conditions under recorded values of the room temperature, pressure and humidity. First, the impulse withstand
test was done by applying ten shots to the insulator [710].
Fig. 2(a) shows the generated standard 1.2 s/50 s lightning
impulse waveform with 170 kVpeak value for the impulse withstand test, i.e. the basic impulse level (BIL) = 6.31 per unit (pu)

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Table 1
Details of the test samples

A
B
C
D
E
F

Status

Material

Number and
type of sheds

Distance between
large sheds (mm)

Top/bottom shed
diameter (mm)

Top/bottom trunk
diameter (mm)

Axial length
(mm)

Arcing distance
(mm)

Creepage distance
(mm)

Used
Used
Used
Used
New
New

Porcelain
Porcelain
Porcelain
Porcelain
Silicone Rubber
Polymeric

12 Regular
11 Regular
13 Irregular
11 Irregular
17 Irregular
16 Irregular

38
27
50
70
41
52

197/197
191/191
202/202
197/230
135/105
134/113

105/108
92/108
103/115
72/108
53
60

590
520
525
540
580
560

503
493
490
475
460
500

1510
1488
1480
1495
1460
1520

of the peak phase operating voltage. Thereafter, the voltage was

increased in steps to reach to the flashover level across the insulator surface. Ten shots were applied at each voltage level with
a time interval of 5 min. All impulse tests were conducted at
the room temperature of 25 C and relative humidity of 55%.
Fig. 2(b) illustrates an example of the flashover on the tail under
positive polarity.
Fig. 3 illustrates a comparison between U50% for all insulators under positive and negative lightning impulses, where all
flashovers occurred on the tail. It can be seen that the negative flashover occurs at higher voltage level. The high-voltage
conductor (connected to the insulator top) and the earth plane
forms a non-uniform field arrangement. Therefore, this trend
is attributed to buildup and accumulation of the space charges.
These charges distort the electric field in a way that under positive the electric field across the airgap becomes highly distorted.
The high-field region (very close to the high-voltage conductor fittings) is in time moving further into the airgap because

Fig. 3. U50% flashover voltage under positive and negative impulses.

electrons are quickly attracted in the positive terminal and leaving the heavy positive ions behind, i.e. extending the region for
ionization. This leads to a decrease in the flashover voltage.
On contrary for the application of negative impulses, the space
charges (electrons) are repelled into the low-field region and
the ionization region is drastically reduced leading to a higher
flashover voltage. As can be seen the SiR and the polymeric insulators (E and F) have the highest negative U50% . All insulators
have roughly the same U50% under positive application, where
insulator E has the lowest U50% because it has the lowest arcing
distance among all insulators tested (see Table 1). It is worth
mentioning that insulators AD are used ones, therefore their
U50% , under negative applications are lower in comparison with
those of insulators E and F. In addition, the arcing distance of
insulator F is higher than that of insulators B and C (see Table 1).
Insulators with HSCEs are indicated as (CE), e.g. insulator A
with HSCEs is indicated as A (CE).
Impulse tests with CEs were conducted for insulators A and
D. Two of each of HSCEs and WACEs were added for two
insulators of type A and three HSCEs for type D. The aim of
this test is to find out the effect of CEs on the U50% of the
insulator. Table 2 introduces a comparison of the application
of the both types of CEs. From Fig. 3 and Table 2, it can be
Table 2
U50% in kVpeak under positive and negative polarities with and without CEs

Fig. 2. Lightning impulse waveforms for insulator A: (a) waveform of lightning

withstand voltage and (b) waveform of lightning flashover voltage.

Polarity

Positive

Negative

Insulator A without CEs

Insulator D without CEs
Insulator A with 2 HSCEs
Insulator D with 3 HSCEs
Insulator A with 2 WACEs

307
284
314
289
356

406
426
447
424
446

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seen that there is a little effect of the HSCEs on the U50% of

the insulator (10%) because of increasing the arcing distance
from 503 mm to 535 mm. When using two WACEs for insulator
A, the positive U50% of the insulator becomes higher by 15%
than that without CEs as a result of increasing the arcing distance
from 503 mm to 596 mm.
4.3. Standard AC articial pollution tests
The AC test circuit consists of a 380 V/400 kV high-voltage
transformer, the test object (insulator), series shunt resistance of
10 k
with the insulator to measure the leakage current passing
through it, a varistor across the shunt to protect the oscilloscope,
and the capacitive divider for measuring purpose. The clean fog
(100% relative humidity) was generated by atomization of tap
water ( 130 S/cm). All tests were conducted at a constant
temperature of 25 C.
For dry/clean (unpolluted) conditions (Figs. 4(a)6(a)), the
leakage currents are purely capacitive (i.e. the phase angle
= 90 ) with very low amplitudes. In the case of clean fog (see
Figs. 4(b) and 6(b)), the leakage currents become purely resistive ( = 0 ) with much higher amplitudes, contrary to insulator
E (Fig. 5(b)), where its hydrophobicity nature prohibits the formation of thin conductive layer of water. Although insulator F
is a new polymeric one but its leakage current increases significantly during the clean-fog condition (see Fig. 6).
Generally for dry/clean insulators, the leakage current path
is capacitive, the current magnitude is small and current shape
is more or less sinusoidal. Clean fog wets the insulator surface
and generates a conductive layer [13]. As wetting progresses,
the leakage current path changes from capacitive to resistive,

Fig. 4. Oscillograms of I and V for insulator B: (a) dry condition and (b) cleanfog condition.

Fig. 5. Oscillograms of I and V for insulator E: (a) dry condition and (b) cleanfog condition.

and simultaneously, current amplitude increases, especially for

insulators with small vertical distance between sheds, e.g. insulators A and B (see Figs. 4(b) and 7(b) and Table 1).
The comparisons of all insulators for dry and clean-fog conditions are shown Fig. 7(a and b), respectively. It can be seen from
the IV curves that the rms current is proportional to the voltage

Fig. 6. Oscillograms of I and V for insulator F: (a) dry condition and (b) cleanfog condition.

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Fig. 8. Oscillograms of I and V for insulator A with and without two HSCEs,
and for dry and clean-fog conditions.

4.4. IV characteristics with and without CEs under

clean-fog condition

Fig. 7. IV curves for all 33 kV line-post insulators: (a) dry condition and (b)
clean-fog condition.

according to these facts. At dry condition the current becomes

mainly capacitive, but it becomes mainly resistive at clean-fog
condition for all insulators except for the SiR one (E). The
desired applied voltage is up to 19 kVrms , but it was increased
to 27 kVrms to include the temporary over voltages. The SiR
insulator (E) gives the lowest leakage current for both conditions because of its hydrophobicity property. It was observed
that isolated water droplets are formed over the surface of the
hydrophobic insulator E and there was no significant water drop
elongation at the rim of the sheds. On the other hand, a continuous water film was formed on porcelain insulators (AD),
which led to much bigger pendant water drops distributed on the
periphery of the underskirts. In Fig. 7(a) under dry condition, the
leakage current for insulator C is the highest because it has the
shortest creepage distance among the porcelain insulators tested
as can be seen in Table 1. The porcelain insulator D also gives
a small leakage current at clean-fog condition due to its design,
where its overall design has a conical shape with irregular sheds
and the vertical distance between sheds is 70 mm, i.e. the highest of all porcelain insulators tested (see Fig. 1(d) and Table 1).
At clean-fog condition, the condensation of the fog will make
layers on all sheds. The droplets falling from the small shed
will drop directly on the surface of the lower/larger shed making another thin layer which will drop faster. Then, the surface
of the lower/larger sheds will be at higher resistance leading to
a reduction in the leakage current. In Fig. 7(b) under clean-fog
condition, on the other hand, insulators A and B give the highest
leakage current because both of them have the smallest vertical
distance between sheds, see Table 1.

In this test, the insulator types A and D were tested inside the
salt-fog chamber (100% relative humidity and at room temperature of 25 C). Two CEs were used for insulator A, while three
were used for insulator D. From Figs. 8 and 9, it can be seen
clearly that the effect of the CEs on insulator A. At dry condition, three is no remarkable change in the leakage current with
and without the CEs. At clean-fog condition, it is obviously seen
that the effect of the CEs on decreasing the leakage currents by
about 75% and 44% for adding two HSCEs and two WACEs,
respectively. The latter effect is due to the gap left in the case of
using WACEs (see Fig. 1(g)). It is worth mentioning that adding
CEs not only reduces the leakage current peaks but also shifts
the current waveforms to be more capacitive (see Fig. 8). Similar
trend was also observed when using three HSCEs for insulator
D but with lower efficiency.
4.5. IV characteristics under salt-fog condition
In this test, the insulators were dipped for 20 min in a high
salinity solution with electrical conductivity of = 100 mS/cm
and NaCl concentration of 70 g/l [12]. Thereafter, the insulators

Fig. 9. The IV curves for insulator A with and without two HSCEs and two
WACEs, and for dry and clean-fog conditions.

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were tested inside the salt-fog chamber at the rated phase voltage
of 19.05 kVrms .
For a continuous application of sinusoidal voltage, the leakage current causes drying of the wet pollution layer and, therefore, both the current amplitude and pattern can vary with time
[14]. Consequently, a continuous fog generation at a constant
rate was used throughout the whole experimental investigations.
As the electric stress increases, additional short current peaks
may appear at the signal crest due to discharges across dry band
areas, as well as between water droplets; especially the dynamically moved water droplets [14]. Water droplets on insulator
surfaces elongate under electric stress. Corona and dry-band
discharges may appear from and between the droplets causing
current pulses with high amplitudes.
Continuous fog was generated and the voltage was applied
for 30 min, where the leakage current pulses become repetitive. The leakage current dries the conductive layer and dry
bands are formed [13]. The high-voltage flashes over the dry
bands to create partial arcs. Dry-band arcing causes surface
discharges, which change both the leakage current shape and
magnitude. Depending on contamination levels, extension of
the arc generates a non-sinusoidal arc current, which may contain short duration impulses superimposed on the 50 Hz current
and the leakage current becomes intermittent as can be seen in
Figs. 10 and 11.
Fig. 10 illustrates the current pulses for insulator E in mA
range. It can be seen that the silicone rubber insulator (E) has
better performance, where other results reveal that its leakage
current is about 40% of that for the polymeric insulator (F).
These results are consistent with those under clean-fog condition; see Figs. 5 and 6 for insulators E and F, respectively,
where insulator E gives much lower leakage current due to
the hydrophobicity property. In addition, the effect of CEs was
investigated for insulators D and A as shown in Fig. 11. From
Fig. 11(a and b), it is noticed that the use of CEs reduces
the peak of the leakage current pulses by more than 90%.
From Figs. 11(c) and 12(d), it can be seen that the WACEs
give higher leakage current than that for the HSCEs type. It is
worth mentioning that high leakage currents for insulators AD
can be attributed to the surface roughening of the field-aged
insulator, which causes of trapping a large volume of conductive salt-fog pollution. These insulators rapidly establish unstable dry band conditions, i.e. unstable high-amplitude current
pulses.

783

Fig. 11. Oscillograms of I and V for insulators D and A: (a) insulator D without
CEs; (b) insulator D with three HSCEs; (c) insulator A with two HSCEs; (d)
insulator A with two WACEs.

4.6. AC wet ashover voltage for medium, heavy and very

heavy pollution levels

Fig. 10. Oscillograms of I and V for insulator E.

Furthermore, most of insulators were tested to get the AC

wet flashover voltage under medium, heavy and very heavy pollution levels [8,12]. The insulators were dipped for 20 min in
solutions of NaCl with electrical conductivities of 100 mS/m
(70 g/l), 167 mS/m (140 g/l) and 214 mS/m (200 g/l) to simulate
the medium, heavy and very heavy pollution levels, respectively [8,12]. Thereafter, each insulator was tested inside the

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length, while each HSCE adds 100 mm. At high concentration

of NaCl, the order of best insulator performance, i.e. the lowest
drop in flashover voltage, is E, D with three CEs, D or C with
two CEs, A with two CEs, C and A.
5. Conclusions

Fig. 12. Effect of NaCl concentration on AC wet flashover voltage with and
without HSCEs.

salt-fog chamber by applying a continuous fog for 20 min [12].

Fig. 12 shows the dependence of AC wet flashover voltage on
the NaCl concentration for insulators (A, C and D) with and
without HSCEs, and for insulator E, too. The reported flashover
voltage is the average value of three readings, for each of the
three samples of the same type, taken to check the repeatability of measurements. Insulators A, C and D showed a common
trend. Silicone rubber insulator (E) gave the best performance
even under very heavy pollution condition because it is a new
(unused) one and has the hydrophobicity nature. Adding the
HSCEs leads to an increase in the AC wet flashover voltage by
more than 9%, 16% and 23% for the medium, heavy and very
heavy pollution levels, respectively.
The status of the insulator surface material plays an important role in handling the excess water to inhibit or promote shed
bridging. There are two other important factors which are associated with the insulator profile, which proved to be relevant
for shed bridging [15]. They are the water accumulation on the
upper surfaces of the insulator sheds upstream and the vertical
distance between sheds. The former can occur due to a cascading effect originating from the upper wet weathersheds, where
flat angle causes shed bridging due to water accumulation on
the top part of the shed [15]. The latter is self-explanatory, i.e.
the larger the vertical distance between two consecutive sheds,
the lower is the possibility of shed bridging [16] as can be seen
from Table 1 and Fig. 12 for insulators D and E.
Therefore, the replacement of the existing porcelain insulators by silicone rubber ones is much better than adding the
CEs to the former. Further improvement in the insulators with
the HSCEs can be achieved by adding more than two units as
can be seen for insulator D. Moreover, insulator A was tested
when adding two WACEs. The results reveal that there is a slight
increase (5%) in the AC wet flashover voltage in comparison to
the case of adding two HSCEs. This trend can be attributed to the
fact that each WACE adds 150 mm to the insulator creepage

Standard lightning impulse tests (IEC-60060 with

1.2 s/50 s) on all insulators (different designs and materials
of line-post type) have shown that they can withstand the BIL
level (170 kVpeak = 6.3 pu) and polymeric insulators have the
highest negative flashover voltage. Used porcelain line-post
insulators give the lowest impulse flashover voltages. There
is a little effect of the creepage extenders on the U50% of the
insulator (15%).
At dry condition and under AC application, all insulators
have very close low values of the leakage currents and with no
appreciable effect of adding the creepage extenders.
Silicone rubber insulator has the lowest leakage current at dry
and clean-fog conditions because of its excellent hydrophobicity
property, and the highest AC wet flashover voltage.
Under clean-fog condition with AC voltage application, the
use of creepage extenders leads to a decrease in the leakage
current in the range of 3375%. While under medium pollution
level (salt-fog condition: IEC-60507), the use of heat-shrinkable
creepage extenders reduces the peak of the leakage current
pulses by more than 90%. Adding heat-shrinkable creepage
extenders leads to an increase in the AC wet flashover voltage by more than 9%, 16% and 23% for the medium, heavy and
very heavy pollution levels, respectively. Wraparound creepage
extenders give slightly higher (5%) flashover voltages under
lightning impulse dry and AC wet conditions, contrary to the
leakage current under clean-fog and salt-fog conditions. Therefore, the replacement of the existing porcelain insulators by
silicone rubber ones is much better than adding the creepage
extenders to the former or using polymeric insulators. Further
improvement in the insulators performance with the creepage
extenders can be achieved by adding more than three units per
insulator which is impractical.
Acknowledgements
The first two authors wish to acknowledge the financial support and cooperation with PDO Company under the research
project CTR 2004-69. All authors would like to express
their gratitude for the technicians in the High-Voltage Laboratory at ECED, College of Engineering, Sultan Qaboos
University.
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