A Method of Increment Short-Circuit Current in Test of Ceramic and Composite Polluted Insulators

One of the most important factors in an artificial pollution test of transmission and distribution insulators of power systems is the short-circuit current of the source. Most laboratories do not have strong source and test transformers. In this paper a test setup has been introduced to improve the performance of high-voltage laboratories for pollution test. It is based on adding an output capacitor and compensator reactors in a cascade setup. Beside simulations, clean-fog test method was used to determine the flashover voltage (FOV) of insulators that selected from overhead lines. Using the developed setup, there is an error in FOV less than 30% compared with a stiff setup in light pollution for ceramic cap and pin insulators. Higher levels of pollution cause the higher error in FOV in all cases. Although the error increases with pollution level, it is smaller in the case of composite insulators. The error decreases depending on the hydrophobicity of silicon rubber. So the less hydrophobic the insulator surface, the greater the error in FOV