Prepared for the IEEE 2002 International Symposium on Electrical Insulation, Boston, Massachusetts

Silicones for Outdoor Insulator Maintenance

James L. Goudie
Dow Corning Corporation
Midland, Michigan, USA
48686-0994
j.l.goudie@dowcorning.com

Abstract This paper will review outdoor insulator contamination Regardless of the source, the basic mechanism for surface
problems and present the variety of silicone based maintenance contamination flashover on static surface materials like
solutions from an historical perspective, from early silicone porcelain can be summarized as follows: [1]
greases to the latest RTV elastomer products. Results of a
current study on commercially available RTV coatings will be Surface Contamination Flashover Mechanism
compared in terms of specifications, actual uncured and cured
physical properties, and results of recent and ongoing electrical
performance evaluations will be presented. 1. Contaminant deposition
An attempt will be made to attribute observed differences in 2. Conductive water filming
performance to the levels and types of formulation components 3. Leakage currents
and how these may affect installation and performance in-use of 4. Local heating
these coatings. 5. Dry-band formation
6. Dry-band arcing
INTRODUCTION 7. Arc (and band) extension
8. Air ionization
Environmental contamination of outdoor insulation has caused 9. Flashover
losses and reduced reliability of electric distribution systems
since their inception. Losses arise from the reduction of The consequences of a flashover are usually serious for the
surface resistance and increase in leakage currents from phase utility or private system owner. At a minimum, a momentary
to phase or ground. This results in wasted power on the outage occurs if a circuit trips and is able to automatically
distribution system and is sometimes measured as “Watt Loss” close, as may happen on a distribution line. Often, the
of individual insulators or device housings. Increases in these insulator is tracked or damaged enough to not allow reclosing
leakage currents cause instability over the surface that can lead without some repair, resulting in outages not tolerable on
to arcing and flashover of the entire insulator, causing an today’s grid.
outage and possibly damaging equipment. Several approaches
to improving reliability in contaminated environments have Mitigation Approaches
been developed over the years. Many are incorporated into
industry standards and utility practices around the world. Over time, many approaches to dealing with contamination
have evolved. They can be categorized into three classes,
Despite significant advances in understanding pollution design, cleaning, and changing the surface properties of the
induced insulator problems and refinement of techniques for insulator.
mitigation, contamination remains one of the primary causes of
system outages in global utility network operations today. Cleaning Periodic cleaning is a common approach to the
problem. This involves anything from de-energized manual
THE FLASHOVER PROBLEM wiping to sophisticated high pressure purified water systems
that allow energized washing. This is obviously an approach
Surface contamination occurs from a number of sources. The that requires special techniques and equipment, along with
most common is coastal salt water carried in fog, mist or spray trained labor. There is also a risk of flashover while washing,
onto substation and line insulators, but many other sources of especially in crowded areas like substations where overspray is
contamination make pollution induced flashovers a much difficult to control. Energized dry cleaning methods have
broader problem. These sources include industrial vapors and been developed that use particulates of nut shells, corn cob, or
dusts, cement dust, highway road-salt and tire dust as well as other powders to remove deposits. These can be used to
auto emissions, and agricultural dusts and fertilizers among remove grease effectively also. Due to the mess created by
many others. these methods, frozen gas particles such as carbon dioxide
have also been used for dry cleaning. Any type of cleaning
must be repeated at a rate that will stay ahead of the the presence of intermittent arcing. This type has become the
contamination in order to be effective. Depending on preferred grease for most insulator applications.
circumstances, this may range from every two weeks in the
worst seasons to annually or longer. Regular natural rain is
perhaps the best maintenance available. Problems frequently Grease type
occur after extended dry periods allow buildup of Property Me2/silica PhMe/silica Me2/ATH
contaminants followed by light rain or heavy fog sufficient to Appearance White Gray Gray
wet the surface without cleaning it. translucent translucent opaque
Specific 1.0 1.0 1.3
Design Over-insulation, the practice of specifying special gravity
extended creepage distance insulators or simply using units Solids 100% 100% 100%
designed for a higher voltage class, can be done when the Permittivity 3.1 2.99 3.88
contamination problem is known before equipment is @100 Hz
specified. More frequently, however, pollution levels are not Dissipation 0.0025 <0.0003 0.0148
understood when the station or line is built, or the source of the factor
pollution arrives after the construction of the utility system. @100 Hz
Replacing the insulation at that time becomes cost prohibitive. Dielectric 20 kV 27 kV 14 kV
Altering the design of the insulation is possible by add-on strength
creepage distance extenders or “booster sheds”. These can @1.27mm
enhance the tested flashover voltage of an insulator or bushing, Arc resist. 20 minutes 100 minutes 800
but contamination will still build up over the body of the @ 2.5 kV minutes
insulator and it will eventually require cleaning. ASTM D
2303
Surface modification Another approach to maintenance is to
modify the surface properties of the insulator. Due to its Table 1 – Comparative properties for three types of electrical
ability to maintain and recover water repellency or grade commercial silicone greases.
hydrophobicity, silicones of various forms are commonly
applied to achieve this. The hydrophobic material on the As demonstrated in Table 1, the greases are different despite
surface interrupts the flashover mechanism at an early stage, all being of the family of silicone greases. Many other types of
preventing a conductive water film to form thereby limiting silicone greases are available, some with substantially different
leakage currents. For new construction, many types of properties intended for other sealing or lubricating
distribution and transmission class substation and line applications. It is important to specify grease designed and
equipment are currently available with silicone elastomer tested for the particular high voltage application.
housings that offer this benefit. But for existing equipment in
problem areas, silicone greases and elastomeric (RTV) The primary drawback with insulator greasing is that the
coatings have been developed. grease eventually becomes loaded with contaminants. At that
point it must be removed, a tedious, messy task, and replaced
with new grease. The life expectancy is totally dependent on
Silicone Greases
circumstances in the environment including not only
unpredictable weather patterns but also unique events in the
One of the first commercial applications for silicones was a area that may cause unusually heavy dust such as construction
dielectric grease to improve surface resistivity. It was quickly or automated harvesting. On average, useful life on insulators
adopted into utility systems and is still used today for some ranges from a few weeks to five years.
applications. This first generation grease was a dimethyl
siloxane polymer base fluid thickened with silica. It is
economical and now used mainly on separable connectors such
Elastomeric Coatings
as load break elbows.
To further reduce the maintenance cost associated with
A more stable phenyl-methyl siloxane based grease has been
used to extend life and prevent drying out in extreme climates.
Though the material cost is higher, it can extend maintenance
intervals and yield a lower total cost.

A third type of silicone grease was developed specifically for

use on high voltage insulators. It uses the less costly dimethyl
base but is blended with an arc resistant filler. This material
can provide much longer service life than traditional greases in
greasing, a silicone RTV (room temperature vulcanizing) Cured physical properties Durometer, tensile and elongation
coating was developed in the 1970’s. After evaluating several of cured materials approximately 50 mils (1.2 mm) were
families of formulations in lab aging tests the best performing measured with results shown in Table 4. As expected, the
was put in a field test site and monitored for over ten years. fumed silica filled material had the highest tensile strength,
Following further evaluations the coating was commercialized followed by material B which has the smaller particle size
in the mid 1980’s. Today, the application has grown and ATH filler.
similar RTV coatings are available, some claiming superior
characteristics. Material Durometer Tensile Elongation
(ppi) (%)
Four current commercial coatings were recently evaluated for B 54 344 133
various attributes. The work is ongoing and further results will C 52 387 116
be shared when available. The coatings are described D 53 285 112
generically in Table 2.
Table 4 – Physical properties of RTV coatings. Tensile and
Designation Description elongation average of three tests. Thickness of sample A did not
A Unpigmented silicone/ATH filled allow direct comparison.
B Pigmented silicone/ATH filled
C Pigmented silicone/silica filled Electrical Properties
D Pigmented silicone/ATH/adhesion
promoter Cured dielectric properties Standard dielectric property
measurements were made, again on samples approximately 50
Table 2 – Silicone RTV coatings included in evaluations. mils (1.2 mm) thick. Results are shown in Table 5.

Physical Properties Material Permittivity Dissipation Dielectric

Percent solids The four materials are all dispersed in solvent
to allow application by spray, dip, or brush methods. The first
measurements were the percent solids of each. This was
determined by weight loss at room temperature in identical lab
conditions. This property is important since the solvent is lost
upon application and only the solids remain on the insulator. It
is also difficult to compare from manufacturers’ information,
as some report the value by volume and some by weight.
Conversion is not straightforward since the stated specific
gravities are for the dispersion mixtures. The specific
gravities of the leaving solvents and cure byproducts versus the
remaining solids are not individually published and are notably
different. Results of the weight loss are shown in Table 3.
Material 3-day wt % 12-day wt % solids
solids
A 77.4% 77.0%
B 71.9 71.7
C 73.6 73.4
D 66.6 66.3
Table 3 – Percent solids (by weight) measurements on four advanced measure of a materials resistance to arcing as can be
commercial RTV coatings. seen on an outdoor high voltage insulator is described in
Manufacturers claim 70 to 75% solids by weight but do not
place tolerances on the values. Normally the viscosity is
adjusted in the field by further solvent dilution for particular
application equipment. Therefore this is not a critical property
other than to compare value in terms of coverage.
factor strength
(kV/mm)
B 2.96 0.015 13.5
C 3.15 0.076 15.6
D 2.99 0.062 13.5
Table 5 – Dielectric properties of RTV coatings determined by
standard ASTM methods. Permittivity and Dissipation factor
determined at 100 Hz. All measurements on samples
approximately 50 mils (1.2mm) thick.
Dry arc reistance A basic measure of a material’s resistance
to dry arcs can be attained according to ASTM D 495. This
method induces an intermittent timed arc over the surface of
the sample between two electrodes 0.25 inch (6.5 mm) apart.
The measurement is the time to burn or track between the
electrodes. The results for these materials appear in Table 6.
The measured times are typical for silicone elastomers in this
test.
Inclined plane tracking and erosion evaluation A more
ASTM D 2303. (IEC 587 is a very similar method). Used
frequently for high voltage housing material evaluations, flat
samples are mounted on a 45 degree incline. A 400 ohm-cm
solution flows from the top to bottom of the sample on the
underside. A prescribed voltage is applied between electrodes
at 2 inches apart. Figure 1 is a sketch of the inclined plane
apparatus. Though not called for in ASTM 2303, a data
 Material Arc track (sec) Pulses > 15 mA

A 184
A B C D
B 186
C 182 70000
D 182
60000
Table 6 – Dry arc resistance as measured by ASTM D 495, time to
track in seconds. 50000

40000

pulses
acquisition system was used to monitor leakage currents during
the tests. The system is described in [2]. 30000

20000

10000

0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
time, hrs

Figure 2. 15 mA and higher pulse counts versus time for RTV

coatings in the inclined plane tracking test.

Figure 1. Schematic of the experimental setup

The stepwise Initial Tracking Voltage method was used for
this evaluation. A starting voltage of 3.0 kV was chosen based
on experience with similar materials. With the stepwise
method, each voltage is held for one hour with the
corresponding flow rate of contaminant. The voltage is
increased by 250 V and held for another hour. Failure occurs
when a sample forms conductive tracks or erodes 0.5 inch
(13mm) the distance between the electrodes. Duplicate
samples for each material were prepared by flowcoating over
ceramic tile to the recommended thickness. Table 7 shows
results from the inclined plane evaluation. The inclined plane
tracking and erosion tests confirm that the silica filler is not as Performance of RTV Silicone Rubber Coatings after
effective as ATH in reducing erosion.
Material Failure Voltage Time to Failure
A >5.0 kV Test stopped @ 9 hrs
Test stopped @ 9 hrs
B >5.0 kV
C 3.0 kV <2hrs
D 4.5 kV <8 hrs
Table 7 – Inclined plane results for RTV coatings.
Figure 2 shows the cumulative leakage current pulses observed
during the inclined plane tests. The data represent the average
for two samples of each coating. Coatings A and B
consistently controlled leakage currents to lower levels than D.
(Coating C was disconnected after failure between 1 and 2
hrs.)
CONCLUSION
Silicone materials can be used effectively to reduce
maintenance in high voltage insulation, but care must be taken
to select the materials best suited for the application.
REFERENCES
[1] Looms, J.S. Insulators for High Voltages. Peter
Peregrinnus Ltd. London, UK. 1988
[2] J. Montesinos, R. Gorur, and J. Goudie. “Electrical
Exposure to an Acidic Environment.” Annual Report of
the 1998 Conference on Electrical Insulation and
Dielectric Phenomena, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. IEEE 0-
7803-5035-9.
[3] Kim S. H., et al, "Chemical Changes at the Surface of
RTV Silicone Rubber Coatings on Insulators During Dry
Band Arcing," IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and
Electrical Insulation, Vol. 1, No. 1, Feb, 1994
[4] Goudie, J., M Owen and T. Orbeck. “A Review of
Possible Degradation Mechanisms of Silicone Elastomers
in High Voltage Applications.” Annual Report of the
1998 Conference on Electrical Insulation and Dielectric
Phenomena, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. IEEE 0-7803-5035-9.