Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials (2020) 21:144–149 Online ISSN 2092-7592
https://doi.org/10.1007/s42341-020-00184-1 Print ISSN 1229-7607
REVIEW PAPER
Online Condition Monitoring and Leakage Current Effect Based
on Local Area Environment
Rizwan Ahmed1 · Taeyong Kim1 · Youn‑Jung Lee1 · Seongho Jeon1 · Junsin Yi1 · In‑Hyuk Choi2 · Ju‑Am Son2 ·
Ja‑Bin Koo2
Received: 12 May 2019 / Revised: 2 February 2020 / Accepted: 14 February 2020 / Published online: 25 February 2020
© The Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers 2020
Abstract
High voltage outdoor insulator plays a pivotal role in safety and reliability of power transmission system.Contamination
severely influences the performance of outdoor insulator. To asses contamination severity on insulator surface and to predict
flashovers, leakage current monitoring is required. The amount of leakage current flowing on the surface of insulator indicates
insulation safety. Increase in leakage current generates high voltage peaks at insulator dead ends. The voltage may be as high
as 1000–5000 volts, mainly depends on certain weather conditions, results in enormous amount of power losses and threat
to public safety. The insulator performance depends on amount and type of pollution and wetting mechanism. Leakage cur-
rent is important tool to investigate insulator electrical surface activity. The scope of this paper is to review leakage current
effect based on local area conditions. Leakage current importance for insulators and different techniques used to measure
leakage current in lab and at field, special focus on online leakage current monitoring.
Keywords Leakage current (LC) · Contamination flashover · Porcelain insulator · High voltage · Humidity
1 Introduction on insulator. Among them environmental stress (pollution)
have high impact on the insulator reliability.According to
Electricity demand is increasing exponentially since its dis- Environmental Performance Index [EPI] 2016 South Korea
covery in 19th century. Electric power system comprises is ranked 173rd out of 180 countries in term of air quality.
of generation, transmission and distribution. Electricity is More than half of the south Korean population is exposed to
often generated at remote areas far from residential areas dangerous levels of fine dust. Besides its harmful effect on
and transmitted through transmission lines to consumers. human’s electrical power system is also under great threat
Safe and reliable transmission of electrical energy is not pos- due to air pollution. The electrical transmission lines specifi-
sible without an efficient high voltage outdoor insulation cally passing through transverse areas in country are facing
system. High voltage single insulator failure causes cata- problems related to environmental pollution [2]. The term
strophic action of whole transmission line network outage. pollution means deposition of contamination on insulator
The cost of insulator may be as low as 5% of the total cost surface which on favorable conditions result in flashover.
of transmission project but their performance is of critical Pollution is strongly corelated with local area conditions,
value [1]. For the past few years environmental challenges the transfer mechanism include weather (wind, rain, humid-
i.e. increase in pollution levels has become global phenom- ity), site location (desert area, coastal area, islands), neigh-
enon. During the service life of insulator numerous stresses boring facilities (chemical plants) etc. there are two types
such as electrical, mechanical and environmental are acting of pollution one is solid non-soluble contamination which
require wetting agent [3]. This type is associated with desert
* Junsin Yi areas, industrially polluted areas or coastal areas where solid
[email protected] layer is deposited and then is rapidly wetted by fog and mist.
The second type includes liquid electrolytic deposition on
1
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, insulator surface which are already conductive. This type
Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon 16419, Republic of Korea
of contamination is related to crops spraying, chemical
2
KEPCO Research Institute, Daejoen 34056, mist and acid rain. In these both cases of contamination the
Republic of Korea
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Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials (2020) 21:144–149 145
deposition are either conductive or become conductive when monitor insulator pollution, electrical activity of insulator
wetted, results in the flow of leakage current [4]. With the and overall performance of the insulator. It is used to warn
flow of current temperature increase and some pollutants when replacement or maintenance of the insulator is needed.
dried out on insulator surfaces forming dry bands, regions In this research article leakage current effect is overviewed
with higher resistance. The applied voltage to insulator is based on local area environment e.g. acid rain, ice accreted
redistributed and mainly applied across dry bands resulting area, industrial area and coastal area etc. moreover online
in surrounding air breakdown. Arcs burns forming surface leakage current monitoring are discussed.
conductivity in series with layer of pollution which are not
bridged. If the resistance of the undried contamination is
low enough the arcs may burn the whole insulator resulting 2 Leakage current importance for insulator
flashover. The arcs cause voltage dip in transmission line if
applied for short time and for long duration causes insulator Insulator in service faces pollution in any form, in some
breakdown According to statistics contamination flashover area’s deposition is less hence require less maintenance/
is second to lightning in the number of power grid incident. cleaning. However, majority of insulators get severe con-
Economically, damages caused by contamination flasho- tamination deposits. These deposits upon wetting causes
ver is 10 times higher than natural lightning [5]. A lot of degradation and flashover phenomenon. It is mandatory to
research is dedicated to measurement and analysis of leakage prevent flashover in any weather conditions which require
current waveform as it is directly related to surface arch- regular checking and maintenance of every insulator and
ing of the insulator. Leakage current waveform depends on replacement of dusty/faulty insulator. Transmission line
surface pollution and wetness of insulator. Leakage current Hight, location and voltage make it very difficult to examine
follows different patterns during steps involved in pollution insulator physically. The monitoring of insulator installed
flashover. Suda [6] classify the leakage current waveform on transmission line passing through mountains terrains
into six stages while predicting the flashover and frequency and other places is physically out of scope. So, a system is
characteristics of cap and pin type insulator. Kumagai et al needed which can detect whether an insulator in area needs
[7] compare porcelain and polymer insulator in salt fog replacement/cleaning. Leakage current and hydrophobicity
and field tests based on leakage current characteristics and are two characteristics which can give information about
aging. They concluded cumulative charges time variations surface pollution on insulator. Hydrophobicity measure-
and their components are helpful in predicting condition of ments methods require human intervention, so it is not fea-
ceramic insulator surfaces. In ref [8] the author proposes a sible for energized insulator monitoring. Leakage current
system, an antenna that detects electromagnetic radiation measurement is applied and recommended by researcher all
produces during partial discharge along with leakage cur- over the world for condition monitoring of insulators. Typi-
rent. However, this system is not tested in field yet. Online cally, a hardware is installed on transmission line along with
leakage current monitoring has been introduced in reference insulators which detects leakage current and information is
[9], current transformers are used to detect leakage current. received in substation. Leakage current is directly related
Optical sampling of leakage current signal is used to predict to surface pollution density and amount of water. As pol-
the contamination flashover. in [10] Optical sensing of leak- lution layer becomes thick more water is retained, surface
age current eliminates the phenomenon of electromagnetic resistance is reduced, and leakage current value is increased
interference. In [11] leakage current was measured using a [13–15]. Surface flashover of insulator occur as leakage cur-
series resistance in the ground lead and embedded with the rent increases beyond limit as shown in Fig. 1.
software generating a complete waveform of leakage current.
The problem of contamination flashover is addressed by
many studies however the findings have not solved the issue. 3 Online porcelain insulator condition
To indicate the contamination degree some common rec- monitoring techniques
ommendation is equivalent salt deposition density (ESDD),
the flashover voltage gradient [12], the current pulse count- The detection method used for condition monitoring of
ing, surface conductance and the leakage current. Leakage ceramic insulator include ultrasonic test method, laser dop-
current provides more discretion of the state of insulator pler vibration method, infrared thermal method, voltage
and is regarded as the most effective dynamic predictive distribution method, acoustic emission method, and leak-
parameter [13]. Considering the Root mean square value age current method. Online condition monitoring of ceramic
of leakage current three stages of contamination discharge insulators is performed using the later four methods men-
are developed security zone, forecast zone and danger zone tioned. On view of online monitoring techniques leakage
and boundary values are 50 mA to 150mA [14]. Leakage current shows superior results compared to other techniques
current measurement is used worldwide to investigate and applied. In [16] author developed an online monitoring
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146 Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials (2020) 21:144–149
Current
transformer
DAS
Porcelain
Discs
Transmission
Transmission line
Tower
Fig. 1 Insulator surface flashover due to contamination
Fig. 3 Online leakage current monitoring system using current trans-
former
system using sensors on transmission line of 230 kV and
500 kV in brazil. In [17] Greek island of Crete a nine 150kV
porcelain insulator has been tested form more than 6 years. the setup shown in Fig. 3. The leakage current was moni-
Operation and practical experience proofed that these system tored using a current transformer with high permeability
lacks reliability i.e. cannot work for a long period of time. core. current transformer was connected between first and
A leakage current was monitored by using the system as second ring of porcelain insulator. The output of CT was
shown in Fig. 2. A collection ring was installed at bottom connected to data acquisition system (DAS). DAS has three
of the porcelain insulator string and measured current were stages in first stage leakage current basic value is measured
passed through the Hall current sensor and the data acquired using full wave rectifier to find maximum peak. The second
are transmitted to the data acquisition system (DAS). The stage measures the highest peak and third stage stores and
data are sampled using 2 kHz sampling rate and leakage cur- register the data using microcontroller circuit and memory.
rent waveform are acquired. In [18] author installed online The author suggest that insulator should be replaced when
leakage current monitoring systemon 400 kV transmission leakage current reaches a value of 250 mA. Leakage current
line porcelain insulator in polluted areas in Mexico using and pollution flashover real time relationship under saturated
humidity is addressed by [19], as all the previous methods
in literature only realize the monitoring of leakage current.
HV The author suggested that for given temperature leakage cur-
rent under saturated humidity could be predicted through
low humidity leakage current. Successful experiments are
conducted on porcelain insulator and a relationship is devel-
Porcelain oped between leakage current and pre-warning of pollution
Discs flashover for different contamination types.
Ring 4 Leakage current effect
upon environmental conditions
Hall
DAS Sensor Acid rain effect: Sulfur dioxide SO2 and NOx ( NOand NO2
mixture) are the gasses involved in Acid rain formation. SO2
and NOx oxidizes to form Sulphuric and nitric acid, these acids
are absorbed by water during raining and brought down to
earth. Clean water is slightly acidic due to presence of carbon
Fig. 2 Online leakage current monitoring system using Hall sensor dioxide in air its Ph value is approximately 5.6, the values
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Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials (2020) 21:144–149 147
greater than 5.6 are termed as acid rain. Acid rain greatly influ- in them resulting flashover [28]. Desert pollution: The climate
ence insulator and responsible for pollution flashover [20]. of deserts is characterized by hurricanes and sand storms, these
The alkaline metals like Na, K,Ca from industrial waste and hurricanes have fast moving sand particles which erodes and
acid rain mixture causes neutralization reaction. The solution crack insulators by striking. These sandstorms cause conduc-
acidity gradually decreases due to neutralization and conduc- tor swinging and decreases breakdown voltage of polluted air
tivity decreases at certain limit but again it increases due to gaps which reduce the efficiency of power transmission line.
higher ion concentration by soluble particles component. As The sand storms increase the deposition on insulator and early
conductivity increases leakage current also increases and heat morning dew is the wetting source [29]. The pollution deposi-
up the electrolyte appearing dry bands on insulator surface tion is normally of higher salt content and larger grain size.
after 1-2 seconds. these actions ultimately cause flashover. Research reveals besides NaCl there are other salts and sul-
CHRZAN et al. [21] conducted experimental investigation phates present in desert pollution like CaSo4 , KNo3 , Na2 So4 .
on sulphuric acid and NaCl solution, their findings revealed [30] shows effect of desert pollution contents on surface leak-
NaCl is more responsible for flashover then diluted sulphuric age current. They revealed that leakage current depends largely
acid. This does not mean that acid rain effect is negligible, on solubility of individual salts.
during winter in Norway flashover incidents are observed due
to acid rain [22]. Ice Accretion: The porcelain Insulator leak- 5 Allowable limit for leakage current
age current is affected by accretion of ice resulting in pol-
lution flashover. Flashover occurs usually due to water film The allowable limit of leakage current for outdoor insula-
present inside ice surface. Ice is deposited on insulator surface tors do not have either defined standards or fixed values.
when ambient temperature rises above freezing point ice melts The reason behind it is outdoor insulator are mounted on
forming water films mixed with pollution [23]. These water top hence their limit of leakage current is set based on their
film have high conductivity a very large voltage is impressed reliability rather safety. Hence the allowable value of leakage
across air gaps causing arcing phenomena ultimately leading current cannot be defined strictly, however a limit is speci-
to flashover. Many authors proposed polymer insulator and fied by power regularities. This limit varies from country to
coating as remedial to prevent the water film making however country or even within the country. The maximum allowable
the limitation faced are hydrophobicity loss and recovery time leakage current limit for transmission line is 100 mA which
[24]. Coastal Pollution: The insulators those are in coastal is defined depending on type of insulator, its voltage rating
regions especially are contaminated by soluble contaminants and losses of transmission line. In dry weather actual values
and different salts mostly NaCl (Sodium chloride). The salt observed ranges from few microamperes to 5 mA. In wet
spray from the sea or wind driven salt laden solid material such conditions peaks up to 50 mA are observed and consider
as sand collects on the insulator surface. These solid layers safe for operation [31].
reduce resistivity of insulator specially when wetted and make
insulator susceptible for leakage current flow. Sodium chloride 6 Measuring leakage current in lab
is the main constituent of this type of pollution. The flashover and in field
can occur if the salts are soluble enough to form a conducting
layer on the insulator surface, irrespective of the contaminant Test conducted in laboratory offer valuable information,
nature. Sheik Sidthik et al [25] predict the contamination level but the exact field conditions are not satisfied all the time.
on surface of the insulator by using leakage current Imean , Imax Furthermore, in case of hydrophophic insulators (ceramics)
and standard deviation (σ) values and issued pre-warning sign local conditions greatly influence the performance of insula-
of pollution flashover by using Artificial Neural Network. In tor. Field measurement give exact view of insulator perfor-
[26] STD-MRA analysis have been performed to identify mance in field but are time demanding and require long term
the salinity and type of salt deposited on insulator for condi- monitoring of insulator. In laboratory leakage current moni-
tion assessment. et al [27] recommended RTV silicon rub- toring have been applied by many researchers however the
ber coating after successful experiments on coastal filed aged fact could not be neglected that researcher create variations
ceramic insulators. Industrial Pollution: Power transmission to meet their purpose. Numerous laboratory tests are applied
lines crossing over industrial complexes are subjected to stack to monitor leakage current e.g. salt fog test [32], clean fog
emission from industrial plants. Paper and cement industries test, rotating wheel dip test, inclined plane test [33], and ice
discharges non-soluble contaminants which are deposited on tests [34], Field measurement are performed, and researcher
insulator surface. Besides these contamination calcium chlo- characterize environments into coastal, industrial, tropical,
ride, carbon and cement dust are also deposited on insulator desert, inland, and agricultural. Combined field and lab tests
surface. These materials are usually dry and unconducive but are sometimes performed with field aged insulator that are
upon wetting they become conductive and leakage current flow tested in lab [35] or pre-polluted insulator in field [36].
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148 Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials (2020) 21:144–149
7 Leakage current and other factors decreases leakage current. Leakage current corona and dry
band arching: When electrical stress is not graded properly
The basic factors such as contamination level, humidity, fog corona discharge occurs. When small dry band partial starts
conductivity, aging, flow rate and air pressure are considered the leakage current waveform becomes nonlinear and leak-
by many researchers during their study on leakage current. age current become resistive. Leakage current waveform
There are other parameters too which should be considered distorts from basic sinusoidal shape and has spikes which
while performing analysis on leakage current of high voltage corresponds to corona discharge. due to corona ultra violet
outdoor insulator. radiation and other factors like ions, ozone, electrons are
Leakage current and electrical stress: In high voltage generated within insulator nearby regions. These factors
insulator electric field stress is responsible for partial dis- result in oxidation, loss of hydrophobicity and corrosion
charge and early breakdown of insulator. Due to partial dis- [39]. The ultra violet radiation associated with corona has
charge leakage current flow between insulator and power shorter wavelength than sunlight and degrade the insulator
pole inside or outside of the insulator surface. Electric field severely.
stress must be controlled in high voltage insulator to prevent
corona and partial discharge. Stress control methods include
corona ring, combined assembly and optimized end fitting
[37]. Field grading materials are used recently by researchers 8 Conclusion
to reduce electrical stress on high voltage outdoor insula-
tor [38]. Leakage current and degradation of insulator: The Leakage current is a tool to investigate the insulator perfor-
degradation of insulator can be observed from the leakage mance and indication for replacement/ cleaning of defected
current waveform. A sign of degradation is the distorted insulator. This paper complements the previous reviews
waveform of leakage current. The ratio of peak to RMS on the topic in terms that it is focused on leakage current
value of leakage current quantitively measures the extant characteristics of porcelain insulator under adverse climate
of distortion. Leakage current and Equivalent Salt Deposit conditions and various contaminations types. It can be con-
Density (ESDD): Equivalent salt deposit density ESDD is cluded that pollution on insulator surface at coastal, indus-
the deposition of Sodium Chloride (mg/cm2) on insulator trial and desert areas are non-conductive. However, upon
surface area with conductivity equivalent to actual deposit wetting becomes conductive and results in leakage current
dissolve in same volume of water. ESDD is used to measure flow and flashover. It is observed that maximum portion of
the severity of pollution on insulator surface area. Leakage contamination constitutes of salt contents which need mois-
current is directly proportional to ESDD. Lower the ESDD ture for solubility and hence conductivity. With the increase
lower will be leakage current and vice versa. Surface resist- in surface pollution leakage current also increases in ceramic
ance is inversely proportional to leakage current . Table 1 insulator. Thus, leakage current is strongly correlated to pol-
shows the pollution severity levels based on ESDD values. lution flashover. Numerous laboratory tests performed on
Leakage current and insulator length: leakage current of leakage current measurement in laboratory and in field are
insulator is reduced by increasing the surface creepage dis- reviewed and reported in the literature.
tance of ceramic insulator string. However, SiR insulator
are investigated and shows slight increase in leakage cur-
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