BEHAVIOR OF POLYMERIC HOUSED METAL OXIDE SURGE ARRESTER UNDER POLLUTION

Electrical & Electronics Engineering

National Conference on "Recent Advances in Materials Science & its Applications" & "Recent Trends in Electrical, Electronics, Computing and Information Technology"

Surge arresters play an important role in the insulation coordination of the power system. Polymeric housed surge arresters are widely used due to their superior performance compared to the porcelain housed surge arresters. Surge arresters are exposed to adverse weather conditions. The polymeric materials get affected more easily by ageing due to partial discharges and leakage currents on the surface. Ageing of the surge arresters is an important issue that should be looked into. There are various factors which contribute in accelerating the ageing of the surge arresters. Pollution is the main cause for ageing of the surge arresters. The pollution causes surface leakage current to flow in the form of scintillations. These scintillations may couple with the internal arrester blocks. This may results in increase in the volume current through the blocks which in turn increases the temperature of the blocks and hence thermal ageing of the arrester. In the present work the metal oxide surge arrester with polymeric housing is tested with pollution coating. Different weather conditions are simulated with coating arrester with different severity artificial pollution and wetting the surface. The pollution is with three different severities. The arrester with pollution coating and at different conditions is subjected to a variable voltage. The results show that the more the severity and moisture on the arrester, the arrester was tripping at a lower voltage and also there is considerable increase in volume and surface currents. Also an effort to understand the linking of the surface current with the volume current for the polymeric housed arrester is done.

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