Testing of RTV coated Disc insulators and their Use in the indian Power sector for enhancing network Performance Sachdev Sanjeev1, Arora Neelesh2 1Grasim Industries Limited, Unit-Aditya Birla Insulators 2Epsilon Asia Group, India Online published on 6 February, 2020. Abstract The Indian power sector has undergone a gigantic leap in terms of capacity addition of the transmission network over the past decade, the Indian electrical grid is one of the widest spanning synchronous grids in the world enabling congestion-free power transfer that requires transmission system performance to be highly reliable while also being highly price sensitive. One of the most crucial components of a transmission line are Insulators and the selection of the same. Suboptimal performance under heavy pollution conditions has resulted in contamination flash-overs on a transnational basis despite design creepage being increased from 25 mm/kV to 31 mm/kV. Though India has seen an adoption of Silicone Rubber Insulators (SRIs) in the recent past, performance and life are often negatively impacted by the quality of the material supplied. Porcelain Disc insulators are still most widely used across the transmission lines and substations. However, Pollution levels have risen manifold and the performance of ceramic insulators have sometime failed to deliver. As part of various technological innovations to enhance the performance of Porcelain Disc insulators under heavy pollution conditions, various permutations and combinations of Room Temperature Vulcanizing (RTV) coated insulators have been widely experimented. This paper examines the laboratory testing on multiple ‘full’ and ‘bottom-only'coated porcelain disc insulator strings that are coated with a quartz-filled RTV coating at 300μ and 500μ Dry Film Thickness. The ‘full’ and ‘bottom-only’ coated insulator of 400 kV strings have passed three 60-minute test cycles at a salinity level of 224 kg/m3. The “bottom-only” coated Porcelain Disc string could be an economically viable method to obtain desired pollution performance compared to fully coated insulators, due to savings in terms of less material requirement, reduced package redesign requirements, easier transportation, handling and field use. Top Keywords Pollution performance, rtv coated insulators, artificial pollution test, partially coated insulators. Top |