Bird streamer caused flashover in EHV transmission line

The bird-streamer caused failures have become one of the major causes of transmission line outages. It is more common and widespread than generally believed, and greatly threatens the reliability of transmission lines. The laboratory study of such failures mechanism is seldom reported especially for long gaps such as 500 kV insulators. Presented in this paper are the results of long air gaps bird streamer flashover experiments conducted on 500 kV and 220 kV transmission line insulators. The experimental results demonstrated that bird-streamer caused surface flashover can happen in 500 kV insulators, however space flashover, because the bird streamer will split into different jets under high electric field cannot short circuit the long air gaps. The high risk areas of flashover for 220 kV and 500 kV insulators were defined in this paper: an elliptical area for 220 kV I string insulator and a symmetrical area beside the central line for 500 kV V string insulator. The influence of some main factors on flashover processes is also elucidated, such as volume, conductivity and viscosity of the streamer, and the insulator type and configuration. The paper has significant value in understanding the bird caused failure mechanisms and designing remedies.