New Approach for Monitoring Contamination Level on Outdoor Insulator Based on Harmonics Components of the Leakage Current

This paper presents a new and alternative approach to predict the severity of pollution by using components of leakage current LC on non-uniform polluted insulators. The LC harmonics components were measured using a new method based on wireless transmission. Laboratory tests were conducted on various pollution levels (0.05, 0.1, 0.15, 0.2, 0.25 and 0.3 mg/cm2) on 3 units string porcelain insulators under two level of voltage stress (0.23 kV/cm and 0.385kV/cm). The results of the test reported that the compare new indicator is the ratio of sum fifth and seventh frequency components to the third with the ratio of total harmonic distortion THD to odd harmonics components number n can be given as boundary for levels of pollution. According to the results of this test, the leakage current LC harmonics predictor K has a reasonable ability to determine the contamination level.