Minimum Distance of Lightning Protection Between Insulator String and Line Surge Arrester in Parallel

The line surge arrester can effectively improve the lightning protection performances of transmission lines by eliminating the insulator flashover. If the line arrester is very close to the insulator string in parallel, the lightning discharging would take place in the gap between the upper discharging ring of the line arrester and the bottom grading ring of the insulator string, there is no discharging in the series gap of the line arrester. Sometimes, the insulator string would have a flashover, the line surge arrester cannot provide protection for the insulator string. This so-called ldquotransverse dischargerdquo phenomenon is caused by the proximity effect of the discharging ring of the line arrester. This phenomenon is explained in this paper, and the transverse discharge phenomenon is simulated in high voltage laboratory. The demanded minimum distances between the 110-kV and 220-kV line arrester and insulator string protected are proposed from experimental results.