Effect of Contamination on the Leakage Current of Inland Desert Insulators

This paper describes HV laboratory tests to study the surface leakage current performance of desert-exposed insulators. It was found that inland desert meteorological conditions and contamination vary considerably from coastal desert areas. Leakage current studies on the simulated desert-polluted insulators exhibit some interesting manifestations which may have strong effects in the processes leading to voltage flashover in the field. A technique is described for testing rapidly the behavior of contaminating salts. Interesting results are presented for the role played by the contamination removed from 132 kV system insulation installed in arid desert, situated several hundred kilometers away from the sea coast.