Laboratory Tests and Web Based Surveillance to Determine the Ice- and Snow Performance of Insulators

To be able to determine, verify and monitor the ice-and snow performance of different insulation solutions, laboratory test methods and an on-site, on-line web based surveillance system are needed. The method for determining the ice performance in laboratory conditions, ice progressive stress (IPS) method, is described in this paper. Further it is described how to use the results of this type of test to estimate statistically the performance of complete overhead line equipped by different insulators. To verify the laboratory ice-and snow test method, to get an idea about the type and number of ice and snow events actually occurring in service and to get more information about ice and snow phenomena in real life an on-site on-line web based surveillance system was designed and built. This sophisticated system, including the automatic image analysis and used statistical tools is described in this paper. Besides the description of the laboratory test method and the surveillance system, service experience, pictures and interesting results obtained so far are also presented.