Modern outdoor insulation - concerns and challenges

Because modern society is strongly dependent on a reliable power supply, there is an urgent need to develop more reliable high voltage insulators. While porcelain and glass have dominated insulator materials for a long period of time, there is renewed interest in polymeric and semiconducting glaze insulators. This paper provides a brief description of composite insulators, including a discussion of their benefits, aging of housing materials, and brittle fracture phenomenon. The paper also discusses the benefits of using insulators with semiconducting glaze surfaces, and identifies four broad issues that are being addressed by the present research on outdoor insulation.