Recording and managing field leakage current waveforms in crete

The Greek Public Power Corporation (PPC) has issued a large project to battle marine pollution in the island of Crete, where its impact is rather severe due to coastal development. As a part of this project, specially designed leakage current (LC) measuring systems have been installed in order to monitor electrical activity on HV insulators and insulators´ overall performance. Recently an insulator test station has been constructed. LC monitoring is commonly used to monitor and investigate the performance of insulators since the shape of LC waveforms is strongly correlated with surface activity. Field measurements are most suitable since they offer an exact view of actual activity and performance in the field. In this paper, the obtained experience in field LC monitoring is investigated focused on monitoring and managing LC waveforms. A review of the installation, measurements, developed software and signal processing techniques and results are presented.