Field experience on the application of surge arresters on transmission lines

Comisión Federal de Electricidad, (CFE is the Mexican Power Utility), has several thousand kilometers of 230 and 400 kV transmission lines (which are considered the main transmission voltages) built along the country: 27,147 km and 28,144 km, respectively as per 2005, which are considered the main transmission voltages. All these lines have seriously been affected by lightning and those whose performance has been very poor, were chosen under that criteria in order to be protected with surge arresters even though the shielding angle and the tower footing resistance may have been improved in several structures, the evaluation will be considered before and after the arrester installation. This paper describes the IIE and CFE experiences obtained during several years in the use of surge arresters (externally gapped) on distribution and transmission lines that run along different parts of the country. These lines usually had many outage rates before being protected with surge arresters.