Experimental techniques to simulate naturally polluted high voltage transmission line insulators

This paper represents experimental techniques to simulate the naturally polluted high voltage insulators, under conditions that simulate the desert environment. Usually, the IEC fog method is used for testing the polluted insulators of high voltage transmission lines, but it does not simulate them under the desert pollution environments. For that reason, in this paper two other suggested techniques are added to the IEC one. The first one is to explain the performance of the polluted insulators under the dew and the second one is to explain their performance under the simultaneous fog and dew. The results of these three tests are compared with each other under different surface polluted layer conductivities. The aim of this paper is to record the leakage current and the warning voltage under different simulation weather conditions that to monitor the insulator strings before the occurrence of the flashover that of course is useful for the efficient maintenance. Also, in this paper, an attempt to simulate the flashover of the insulator in the field condition (actual outdoor condition) is presented. Where, the surface of the insulator is polluted naturally over a relatively long period, while it is permanently under high voltage.