A study on leakage current characteristics of polymeric insulators for different pollution layers

In practice insulators are exposed to various weather conditions throughout the year and they influence surface of the polymeric insulators. This paper deals with study on the leakage current of polluted polymeric insulators. It is well known that polymeric insulators are having very good hydrophobicity. Researchers are presently working on the recovery of hydrophobicity and also on hydrophobicity of polluted polymeric insulators. In this regard, it is to be understood that whether hydrophobicity still persists for medium and heavily polluted polymeric insulators. ie, whether hydrophobicity transfer occurs on a polluted polymer insulators. This experimental investigation is being carried out in order to understand whether hydrophobicity persists for thin, medium and thickly coated polymeric insulators. The paper gives the results of the experiments. It can be observed from the results that thin coating on polymer insulators results in lower current and the thickly coated polymer insulators draws higher currents and the current drawn by the medium coated insulator falls in between.