Lightning surge characteristics on inclined incoming line to substation based on reduced-scale model experiment

The lightning protection design of a substation is generally based on the surge overvoltage incoming to the substation, which is generated by the back-flashover across an insulator string of the transmission tower that is closest to the substation and struck by a lightning return stroke. In this case, surges propagate along non-horizontal or non-uniform lines such as the tower and the inclined lines incoming to the substation. Although the surge characteristics of a tower have been intensively studied as of today, those of inclined incoming lines to a substation have not yet been investigated. In this paper, experiments have been conducted using a reduced-scale model to clarify the surge characteristics of the conductor system that is composed of horizontal transmission line, two towers, inclined incoming line and a substation gantry. It turns out from the experiments that the potential (voltage) generated at the tower arm rises gradually, compared with the current injected in the tower top. Furthermore, it is found that the power line potential at the gantry is smaller than that that at the tower where the back-flashover occurs, while the opposite trend is obtained from a circuittheory- based simulation in which the inclined incoming line is represented by a horizontal line. The latter approximation has been usually employed in representing inclined incoming lines in lightning surge simulations using the Electromagnetic Transients Program (EMTP) or its alternatives. The fact that the power line potential at the gantry, evaluated by the present experiment, is smaller than the EMTPcomputed value would contribute to a more economical and rational design of a substation.