INSULATION CO-ORDINATION

Insulation Coordination:
“The process of bringing the insulation strengths of electrical equipment and buses into the
proper relationship with expected overvoltages and with the characteristics of the insulating
media and surge protective devices to obtain an acceptable risk of failure.”

Basic lightning impulse insulation level (BIL):

“The electrical strength of insulation expressed in terms of the crest value of a standard lightning
impulse under standard atmospheric conditions.”

Basic switching impulse insulation level (BSL)

“The electrical strength of insulation expressed in terms of the crest value of a standard
switching impulse.”
Factor of Earthing:
This is the ratio of the highest r.m.s. phase-to-earth power frequency voltage on a sound
phase during an earth fault to the r.m.s. phase-to-phase power frequency voltage which would be
obtained at the selected location without the fault.
This ratio characterizes, in general terms, the earthing conditions of a system as viewed
from the selected fault location.
Effectively Earthed System :
A system is said to be effectively earthed if the factor of earthing does not exceed 80%,
and non-effectively earthed if it does.

Statistical Impulse Withstand Voltage:

This is the peak value of a switching or lightning impulse test voltage at which insulation
exhibits, under the specified conditions, a 90% probability of withstand.
In practice, there is no 100% probability of withstand voltage. Thus the value chosen is that
which has a 10% probability of breakdown.

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Statistical Impulse Voltage:
This is the switching or lightning overvoltage applied to equipment as a result of an event of
one specific type on the system (line energising, reclosing, fault occurrence, lightning discharge,
etc), the peak value of which has a 2% probability of being exceeded.

Protective Level of Protective Device:

These are the highest peak voltage value which should not be exceeded at the terminals of a
protective device when switching impulses and lightning impulses of standard shape and rate
values are applied under specific conditions.
Necessity of Insulation Coordination:
i. To ensure the reliability & continuity of service
ii. To minimize the number of failures due to over voltages
iii. To minimize the cost of design, installation and operation
Requirements of Protective Devices:
 Should not usually flash over for power frequency overvoltages
 Volt-time characteristics of the device must lie below the withstand voltage of the
protected apparatus
 Should be capable of discharging high energies in surges & recover insulation strength
quickly
 Should not allow power frequency follow-on current.
Volt-Time Curve
The breakdown voltage for a particular insulation of flashover voltage for a gap is a function
of both the magnitude of voltage and the time of application of the voltage.
Volt-time curve is a graph showing the relation between the crest flashover voltages and the
time to flashover for a series of impulse applications of a given wave shape.
Construction of Volt-Time Curve:
 Waves of the same shape but of different peak values are applied to the insulation whose
volt-time curve is required.
 If flashover occurs on the front of the wave, the flashover point gives one point on the
volt-time curve.
 The other possibility is that the flashover occurs just at the peak value of the wave; this
gives another point on the V-T curve.
 The third possibility is that the flashover occurs on the tail side of the wave.
 To find the point on the V-T curve, draw a horizontal line from the peak value of this wave
and also draw a vertical line passing through the point where the flashover takes place

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  The intersection of the horizontal and vertical lines gives the point on the V-T curve.

Steps for Insulation Coordination:

1. Selection of a suitable insulation which is a function of reference class voltage (i.e., 1.05
X Operating voltage of the system)
2. The design of the various equipments such that the breakdown or flashover strength of all
insulation in the station equals or exceeds the selected level as in (1)
3. Selection of protective devices that will give the apparatus as good protection as can be
justified economically
Conventional method of insulation co-ordination:
 In order to avoid insulation failure, the insulation level of different types of equipment
connected to the system has to be higher than the magnitude of transient overvoltages that
appear on the system.
 The magnitudes of transient over-voltages are usually limited to a protective level by
protective devices.
 Thus the insulation level has to be above the protective level by a safe margin. Normally
the impulse insulation level is established at a value 15-25% above the protective level.

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 Consider the typical co-ordination of a 132 kV transmission line between the transformer
insulation, a line gap (across an insulator string) and a co-ordinating gap (across the transformer
bushing). [Note: In a rural distribution transformer, a lightning arrester may not be used on
account of the high cost and a co-ordinating gap mounted on the transformer bushing may be the
main surge limiting device]

In co-ordinating the system under consideration, we have to ensure that the equipment used
are protected, and that inadvertent interruptions are kept to a minimum.
The co-ordinating gap must be chosen so as to provide protection of the transformer under all
conditions. However, the line gaps protecting the line insulation can be set to a higher
characteristic to reduce unnecessary interruptions.

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 For the higher system voltages, the simple approach used above is inadequate. Also,
economic considerations dictate that insulation coordination be placed on a more scientific basis.
Statistical Method of Insulation Co-ordination
At the higher transmission voltages, the length of insulator strings and the clearances in air
do not increase linearly with voltage but approximately to V 1.6 The required number of
suspension units for different overvoltage factors is shown below.

It is seen that the increase in the number of disc units is only slight for the 220 kV system,
with the increase in the overvoltage factor from 2.0 to 3.5 ,but that there is a rapid increase in the
750kV system.
Thus, while it may be economically feasible to protect the lower voltage lines up to an
overvoltage factor of 3.5 (say), it is definitely not economically feasible to have an overvoltage
factor of more than about 2.0 or 2.5 on the higher voltage lines.

Switching overvoltages is predominant in the higher voltage systems. However, these may
be controlled by proper design of switching devices.

In a statistical study, the statistical distribution of overvoltages has to be known instead of

the possible highest overvoltage.
In statistical method, experimentation and analysis carried to find probability of occurrence
of overvoltages and probability of failure of insulation.

The aim of statistical methods is to quantify the risk of failure of insulation through
numerical analysis of the statistical nature of the overvoltage magnitudes and of electrical
withstand strength of insulation.

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 The risk of failure of the insulation is dependant on the integral of the product of the
overvoltage density function f0(V) and the probability of insulation failure P(V). Thus the risk of
flashover per switching operation is equal to the area under the curve

Since we cannot find suitable insulation such that the withstand distribution does not
overlap with the overvoltage distribution, in the statistical method of analysis, the insulation is
selected such that the 2% overvoltage probability coincides with the 90% withstand probability
as shown.

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