Insulators

The insulators for overhead lines provide insulation to the power conductor from the ground.
The insulators are connected to the cross arm of the supporting structure and the power
conductor passes through the clamp of the insulator. These insulators are mainly made of
either glazed porcelain or toughened glass. The materials used for porcelain are silica 20%
feldspar 30% and clay 50%. The porcelain should be ivory white, sound and free from defects.
It should be vitrified because the presence of pores or air in the porcelain will lower down its
dielectric strength. Any sealed air impurity will also lower the dielectric strength of porcelain.
It is, therefore, desirable that porcelain to be used for insulators should be air-free and
impervious to the entrance of liquids and gases. The dielectric strength of porcelain should be
15 kV to 17 kV for every one-tenth inch thickness. Normally it is difficult to manufacture
homogeneous porcelain and, therefore, for a particular operating voltage two, three or more
pieces construction is adopted in which each piece is glazed separately and then they are
cemented together. Porcelain is mechanically strong, less affected by temperature and has
minimum leakage problem.

Toughened glass is also sometimes used for insulators because it has higher dielectric strength
(35 kV for one-tenth inch thickness) which makes it possible to make use of single
piece construction, whatever be the operating voltage. Glass being transparent, it is very easy
to detect any flaw like trapping of air etc. It has lower coefficient of thermal expansion and; as
a result, the strains due to temperature changes are minimized. The major drawback of glass
is that moisture condenses very easily on its surface and hence its use is limited to about
33 kV. The design of the insulators is such that the stress due to contraction and expansion in
any part of the insulator does not lead to any defect. It is desirable not to allow porcelain to
come in direct contact with a hard metal screw thread. Normally cement is used between
metal and the porcelain. It is seen that cement so used does not cause fracture by expansion or
contraction.
Types of insulators
There are three types of insulators used for overhead lines:

(i) Pin type,

(ii) Suspension type, and

(iii) Strain type.

Pin type insulator (Fig. 8.1) consists of a single or multiple shells (petticoats or rain sheds)
adapted to be mounted on a spindle to be fixed to the cross arm of the supporting structure.
Multiple shells are provided in order to obtain sufficient length of leakage path so that the flash
over voltage between the power conductor and the pin of the insulator is increased. The design
of the shells is such that when the uppermost shell is wet due to rain the lower shells are dry and
provide sufficient leakage resistance.

It is desirable that the horizontal distance between the tip of the lowermost shell should be less
as compared with the vertical distance between the same tip and the cross-arm,
otherwise in case of an arc-over, the discharge will take place between the power conductor and
cross-arm rather than power conductor and the pin of the insulator; thereby, the cross-arm
will have to be replaced rather than the insulator. It is to be noted that the power conductor
passes through the groove at the top of the insulator and is tied to the insulator by the annealed
wire of the same material as the conductor. The pin type insulators are normally used upto 33
kV. In any case it is not desirable to use them beyond 50 kV as the cost of such insulators then
increases much faster than the voltage. The cost beyond 50 kV is given by

Cost ∝ Vx where x > 2.

The insulators and its pin should be sufficiently mechanically strong to withstand the
resultant force due to combined effect of the weight of the conductor, wind pressure and ice
loading if any per span length. The pin type of insulators are uneconomical beyond 33 kV
operating voltage. Also the replacement of these insulators is expensive. For these reasons for
insulating overhead lines against higher voltages, suspension insulators (Fig. 8.2) are used. These
insulators consist of one or more insulator units flexibly connected together and adapted to be
hung for the crossarm of the supporting structure and to carry a power conductor at its lowest
extremity. Such composite units are known as string insulators. Each insulator is a single disc-
shaped piece of porcelain grooved on the undersurface to increase the surface leakage path
between the metal cap at the top and the metal pin at the bottom of the insulator. The cap at the
top is recessed so that it can take the pin of another unit and in this way a string of any required
number of insulators can be built. The cap and the pin are secured to the insulator by means of
cement. The standard unit is 10″ × 5 34 ″ in size. The diameter is taken as 10″ as it gives
optimum spark over to puncture voltage ratio. Increasing the diameter
further increases the flash over or spark over voltage but it lowers the above ratio which is
undesirable.
Suspension insulators being free to swing, the clearances required between the power
conductor and the supporting structure are more as compared to pin type insulators.

This means the length of the cross arm for suspension insulators is more as compared with the
pin type. The suspension insulators, in addition to being economical as compared to pin type for
voltages more than 33 kV, have the following further advantages:
1. Each insulator is designed for 11 kV and hence for any operating voltage a string of
insulators can be used. For example, for 132 kV transmissions, the number of insulators required
is 12 (maximum).

2. In case of failure of one of the units in the string, only that particular unit needs
replacement rather than the whole string.

3. Since the power conductor and string swing together in case of wind pressure, the
mechanical stresses at the point of attachment are reduced as compared with the pin type of
insulator where because of the rigid nature of the attachment fatigue and ultimate brittleness
of the wire result.

4. The operating voltage of the existing transmission can be increased by adding suitable
number of discs in the string instead of replacing all the insulators as is necessary in case of
pin type insulators. The strain insulators are exactly identical in shape with the suspension
insulators.

These strings are placed in the horizontal plane rather than the vertical plane as is done in case of
suspension insulators (discs are in vertical plane in case of string insulators). These are used
to take the tension of the conductors at line terminals, at angle towers, at road crossings and at
junction of overhead lines with cables. These insulators are, therefore, known as tension or
strain insulators. For low voltages of the order of 11 kV, shackle insulators are used. But for
higher voltages a string of insulators is used. Whenever the tension in the conductor is very
high as at long river crossings etc., sometimes two, even three, strings of insulators in parallel
have been used.
The thumb rule for finding the number of insulator discs for a particular operating voltage is to
have one disc for every 11 kV. This does not mean that the voltage across the discs of the string
is uniformly distributed. This is because of the capacitances formed between the metal parts of
the insulators and the tower structure. These capacitances could be made negligibly small
by increasing the distance between the insulators and the tower structure which requires larger
lengths of cross arms. This will result into bigger size of the towers and hence it becomes
uneconomical. Therefore, in practice the insulators are not very far from the tower structure and
hence these capacitances affect the voltage distribution across the string. The capacitance of
each unit is known as mutual capacitance. Fig. 8.3 represents an equivalent circuit for a string of
4 insulator discs.

Here capacity to ground is the capacitance of metal part of the insulator disc to the tower
structure. Since the insulator discs are identical, each disc is represented by its mutual capacity
mC. Let V be the operating voltage and V1, V2, V3 and V4 the voltage drops across the units
starting from the cross arm towards the power conductor.
V = V1 + V2 + V3 + V4 (8.1)

The objective is to find out the voltage across each disc as a multiple of the operating
voltage and to compare the voltage across each unit. From the diagram it is clear that
I2 = I1 + Ic1 = V1mωC + V1ωC (8.2) where ω is the supply angular frequency
This means the voltage drop across the unit nearest the cross arm is minimum and it
goes on increasing as we go towards the power conductor. The voltage drop across the unit
nearest the power conductor is maximum. This conclusion can be drawn looking at the diagram
without going into mathematics.

Since the mutual capacity of each disc is same and the current through the topmost unit is
minimum, the voltage drop across that unit will be minimum. As we go down the unit towards
the power conductor the current goes on increasing being the maximum in the lowest unit; the
voltage drop is maximum there.

It is clear that the lowermost unit in a string of insulators is fully stressed or utilized. As
we go towards the cross arm the units are less stressed as compared to their capacity and
hence they are not utilized fully. String efficiency is a measure of the utilization of material in
the string and is defined as

where n is the number of insulators in the string and S.O.V. represents the spark over voltage.
The potential distribution across the insulator string can be obtained in an easier way
as follows. Figure 8.4 is modified slightly so as to keep symmetry in writing mathematical
expression.
At junction n,