Power Transmission and

Distribution DR. MUHAMMAD NAEEM ARBAB

Lecture 11and 12

Insulator String

Transmission lines insulation system is generally in the form of string of identical units stacked
together. The single units are disc type insulator with either glass or porcelain as dielectric
material. The conductor is attached via a connector to the pin of the lowest unit of the string. The
string is suspended from the cross arm at the point of support. Such arrangement is shown in
Figure (1) and thus makes it a suspension insulator.

Figure 1

Voltage Distribution and String Efficiency

The insulator string used in 3-phase transmission lines is stressed by a voltage: VL / 3 , where;
VL is the line voltage of a 3-phase system. The disc unit is essentially a capacitor with
capacitance ranging from 20 to 40pF. Forming a string connects identical capacitors in series
with a voltage across each individual units sums up to the voltage: VL / 3 . However, the
voltage across each identical unit in a string is different; the lowest unit connected to the line is
most highly stressed and therefore takes the most of the voltage burden. The upper-most unit
being connected to the ground structure is lightly stressed and therefore takes the least share of
the total voltage. Thus along the string the voltage is non-uniformly distributed; with the lower-
most unit taking the greater share and the upper-most unit taking the least share of the total phase
voltage. This is due to the stray capacitance that exists between the metal hardware of the
insulators and the conductor with the grounded supporting structure. In most deign and
arrangements the stray capacitance is considered between 0.1 and 0.2C and is distributed all
along the string. The equivalent circuit indicating actual insulator units by capacitance C and
stray capacitance by kC (0.1 < k < 0.2) is shown in Figure 2.

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Figure 2

The selection of insulator units and formation of string is governed by string efficiency (usually
percentage efficiency), which is given by:

V
  100 1
nV1

Where; V is the system phase voltage and V1 is the voltage across the lower-most insulator unit
with its pin at conductor potential. For most purposes the string efficiency should be greater than
80%. In case the efficiency is less, it can be improved either adding an insulator unit in the string
or by using a guard ring.

Example 1: A string consists of three identical insulator units of disc type, is to be used in a 3-
phase, 50Hz, 45kV dedicated transmission line for a heavy industry. Calculate the voltage
distribution along the string, across each insulator unit and the string efficiency. Comment on the
results and work out remedy, if any for improvement.

Solution: The line voltage of the system is 45kv, so that the phase voltage which appears across
V 45
the string will be: L   26 kV = V. There are three identical units of capacitors, each
3 3
having capacitance C. Let us assume stray capacitance of 0.2C. The schematic arrangement is
shown in Figure (3). There are two possible nodes and are marked as a and b. The voltages are
VA, VB and Vc appearing across each unit as shown. The currents are also indicated.

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Figure 3

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Figure 4

We can see that the string efficiency is not improved and is further deteriorated. This is mainly
due to the increase in stray capacitance between the metallic hardware of insulator units and the
ground structure that increases the leakage current. Moreover, additional unit in the string
increases the overall weight of the string, which may causes moments in excess of the normally
allowed. Further the inclusion of additional unit(s) also decreases the minimum ground clearance
required since the overall length of the string increases due to which the conductor is lowered.

Guard Ring

Guard ring is a toroidal electrode that is connected to the pin of the lowest insulator unit of the
string where it connects to the conductor. The guard ring is therefore maintained at the conductor
potential. Guard rings are usually made of aluminium which is lighter in weight. The
arrangement is shown in Figure (5). The inclusion of guard ring forms a system of stray
capacitance (between 0.05C to 0.1C) between the guard ring (at conductor potential) and

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insulator string metal hardware. The effect of the guard ring is to counter the leakage current due
to already stray capacitance by injecting currents from the conductor side.

Figure 5

Example 2: In Example 1 use the guard ring to improve the string efficiency without adding an
extra insulator unit in the string. Assume that the distributive stray capacitance between guard
ring and hardware of insulators is 0.1C.

Solution: When a guard ring is included, the stray capacitance so formed between the guard ring
and insulator metal hardware will inject a current into the main string tending to compensate for
the leakage current that result due to the stray capacitance between the grounded supporting
structure and the insulator metal hardware. The situation is shown in Figure (6).

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Figure 6

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It can be seen that the string efficiency improves further. To start with the string efficiency
calculated for the string containing three units was 78%. Including an additional unit reduces the
efficiency to 65%. On the other hand keeping the insulator units as three and using a guard ring
improves efficiency to 86.8% or 87% approximately. Thus the guard ring effectively increases
the string efficiency without the need for including an additional insulator unit(s).

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