A Novel Approach to Design Optimum Insulator Profile by Predicting Insulator Performance in Polluted Conditions.

High voltage insulators must have high superficial resistance to prevent current conductance in undesired path. In spite of considering appropriate superficial resistance during design and manufacturing, accumulation of pollution on insulators in wet condition along with inappropriate insulation profile design result in electrical breakage and repetitive outages. Operation records, high outage rates due to pollution and short intervals of insulator washing in southern regions of Iran confirm the problem. Thus, appropriate design of insulation in a power network, especially in heavy contaminated regions is very crucial. An efficient and appropriate insulation profile design should be provided based on situation and perfect knowledge of system parameters such us pollution. Insulator profile improvement always considered us one of the suitable approaches to enhance insulation performance in contaminated conditions. In this paper a new approach based on filed measurements of pollution along with simulation is presented to predict insulator performance in polluted conditions. A valuable tool to predict pollution deposition on various profiles to predict insulator behavior and optimum profile in polluted regions is achieved by simulation of weather and dust particles for various insulators surface using fluid dynamic comparing with field studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]