2021 the 4th International Conference on Energy, Electrical and Power Engineering

Research on Detection of Faulty Insulators Using

Optical Sensors
2021 4th International Conference on Energy, Electrical and Power Engineering (CEEPE) | 978-1-6654-3363-1/20/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/CEEPE51765.2021.9475830

Hongfeng Ma, Youchong Duan, Zhongkai Xu, Zongyu Liu, Feng Guo
Yingkou Electric Power Company
State Grid Liaoning Electric Power Company, LTD
Yingkou, China
smwwhu@163.com

Abstract—Insulators are important parts of transmission lines. insulator. Fig. 1 is a schematic diagram of the electric field
The reliability and stability of their operation determine the safe distribution of a good insulator and a faulty insulator, the
operation of power systems. Therefore, the regular inspection of electric field around the insulator is decomposed into a
faulty insulators is one of the essential tasks in the operation and horizontal component and a vertical component. The vertical
maintenance of transmission lines. In this paper, an insulator component is parallel to the high and low voltage electrodes of
detection method based on fiber-optic electric field sensor is the insulator. Under normal conditions, the change curve along
proposed, the test results show that the deterioration of the the axis of the insulator is smooth and generally U-shaped, this
insulator at the high voltage end, the low voltage end and the is determined by the relative size of the stray capacitance
middle part can be identified by the results. It shows that the
between the insulator and the wire and the iron tower, at the
detection method proposed in this paper can be an effective
method for detecting faulty insulators on transmission lines
high voltage end close to the wire side, because the shunting
effect is greater than the confluence effect, the farther away the
Keywords-optical sensor, deteriorated insulator, detection insulator is from the high voltage end, the smaller the current
technology, electric field distribution obtained by the insulator's own capacitance, so the voltage
drop is smaller; and the grounding end close to the tower has a
smaller shunting effect than the confluence effect. Therefore,
I. INTRODUCTION the voltage drop of the insulators near the tower side will rise,
In recent years, the number of high-voltage transmission making the entire electric field distribution appear as an
lines has increased significantly, and the operating status of asymmetric "U-shaped" distribution [7-9].
insulators is closely related to the security of the power grid.
As the insulator is exposed to a more complicated external
environment for a long time, the insulation performance and
mechanical performance will be greatly reduced [1-3]. This
may cause an accident in the power transmission system, so
distinguishing the characteristics of deteriorated insulators
among strings precisely and timely is of great significance.
There are many methods for detecting faulty insulators, and
electric field method is one of the most efficient method to
defect insulators. The principle of electric field method is to
analyze the axial distribution of electric field of insulator string
and compare it with that of good string, especially the
introduction of optical fiber electric field sensor makes electric
field method more simple and more reliable [4-6].
In this paper, the principle of detecting faulty insulators
based on fiber optic electric field sensors was introduced, then
the detection method and the composition of the detection
device were introduced. Finally, the detection device was Fig. 1. Graph of relationship between insulator degradation and electric field
distribution.
tested on the 220kV transmission line to verify the feasibility
of device.
B. The Pockels Effect
II. PRINCIPLE OF ELECTRIC FIELD METHOD USING The Pockels effect means that the change in refractive
OPTICAL SENSORS index is proportional to the applied field strength. Certain
substances also produce induced birefringence in an electric
A. Electric Field Detection Method field, the magnitude of which is proportional to the intensity of
The advantages of the electric field detection method are the electric field. The Pockels effect is a linear effect and only
mainly reflected in the fact that it is less interfered by external exists in crystals without a center of symmetry [10-11]. The
factors such as weather, and it can detect the defects inside the formula for the Pockels effect is

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 G kE
In the equation, G is a refractive index, k is the coefficient
for the Pockels effect, E is an applied electric field.
The principle of the Pockels effect is shown in Fig. 2,
When the incident light enters along the optical axis of the
crystal, it first passes through a polarizer to become linearly
Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of the Pockels effect.
III. EXPERIMENTAL STUDY
A. Device for Detecting Faulty Insulator
The schematic diagram of the online monitoring structure
of the device for detecting faulty insulator is shown in Fig. 3.
Passive electric field probe 5 is a rectangular passive optical
electric field sensor that does not contain any conductive
materials and is encapsulated by a shell, the signal is led out by
two optical cables with a sheath diameter of 3mm. The electric
field measuring device 1 sends out a measured light signal with
stable power, which is input into the passive electric field
probe and passes through the electro-optic crystal. The output
terminal receives the optical signal modulated by the external
electric field, and the measured value of the electric field
intensity can be obtained by the signal conditioning circuit
after photoelectric conversion.
Fig. 3. Chematic diagram of detection system structure.
B. Experiment Results
The experiments for detecting faulty insulators are carried
out in the high-voltage test hall. The specific test conditions are:
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(1) polarized light, and then passes through a 1/4 glass plate to
become circularly polarized light [12-13]. When passing
through the optical crystal, it undergoes birefringence under the
action of an external electric field. The phase of the light has
changed, and finally the phase change of the light is converted
into the change of light intensity using the analyzer, which can
reflect the electric field intensity [14-16].
220kV composite insulator string, a total of 19 to 23 pieces,
suspended on single-phase wire, and the loading voltage is
123.7kV. The humidity is 35% and the temperature is 3~6ć.
1) Electric field measurement test of composite insulators
running at reduced voltage under different measuring
distances.
Sample: without defect, the loading voltage is 110kV.
The measured electric field distribution curve is shown in
Fig. 4.
Fig. 4. Electric field distribution curve at different measuring distances.
It can be seen from the Fig. 4 that the sensor is 10cm or less
from the insulator, the measured electric field distribution
curve is close to the theoretical U-shaped distribution, and is
relatively smooth. The farther the distance is, the less the
surface electric field distribution is affected by the insulator
itself. Therefore, the measuring distance is selected as 10cm in
the following experiment.
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 2) Electric field measurement test of good composite
insulator under rated voltage
Sample: without defect, the loading voltage is 220kV.
The measured electric field distribution curve is shown in
Fig. 5.
The measured electric field distribution curve is shown in
Figure 6-8.
It can be seen from the Fig. 6-8 that the internal defect
made of tin foil in the composite insulator significantly affects
the distribution of the electric field on the surface of the
insulator. The position of the defect directly corresponds to the
partial depression of the electric field shape. Through the
electric field distribution curve, the degree and location of this
type of continuity defect can be directly judged.

Fig. 5. Electric field distribution of good composite insulator under rated

voltage.

It can be seen from the Fig. 5 that the electric field

distribution curve of a good composite insulator under the rated
voltage level has the same shape as under the step-down
operating condition, and only the numerical value changes Fig. 7. Electric field distribution of the deterioration of the sixth and seventh
proportionally, which is a smooth U-shaped distribution insulator.
without obvious distortion.
3) Electric field measurement test of composite insulator
with internal defect under rated voltage
The core rod sheath of the composite insulator is wrapped
in tin foil to simulate the internal defects of the composite
insulator. There are three types of samples:
(1) Sample: the position of the sixth umbrella skirt of the
composite insulator is defective, the loading voltage is 220kV.
(2) Sample: the position of the sixth and seventh umbrella
skirt of the composite insulator is defective, the loading voltage
is 220kV.
(3) Sample: the position of the nineteenth umbrella skirt of
the composite insulator is defective, the loading voltage is
220kV.
Fig. 8. Electric field distribution of the deterioration of the nineteenth
insulator.

4) Electric field measurement test of composite insulators

Fig. 6. The electric field distribution when the position of the sixth umbrella
skirt of the composite insulator is defective.
affected by salt water immersion
Sample: The fourteenth umbrella skirt impregnated in salt
water, the loading voltage is 220kV.
The measured electric field distribution curve is shown in
Fig. 9.
It can be seen from Fig. 9 that the composite insulator
defect caused by salt water immersion can cause the electric
field distribution distortion, but the influence is weaker than the
defect made by tin foil. The position of the electric field
depression and the defect position of the salt water can still be
well matched.

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Fig. 9. Electric field distribution of the deterioration of the forteenth insulator.
5) Electric field measurement test of composite insulator
without corona ring
Sample: without defect, remove the corona ring on both the
high voltage side and the low voltage side, the loading voltage
is 220kV.
The measured electric field distribution curve is shown in
Fig. 10.
It can be seen from the figure that the presence or absence
of the corona ring has little effect on the electric field
distribution curve. Compared with the corona ring, the electric
field distribution curve without the corona ring is smoother,
still showing a U-shaped distribution, and there is no obvious
local depression.
Fig. 10. Electric field distribution of insulators without the influence of corona
ring.
C. Difference between Experiment Results and Theory
Comparing the experiment results with the theoretical
research results, it can be seen from the results that the theory
and test results are in good agreement with each other.
Although there are some slight differences, these small
differences have no effect on judging the deterioration of
insulators, especially the more serious internal defects. There
may be two reasons for these small differences:
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(1) In this experiment, the insulating rod extends from the
side to the insulator, but in the actual transmission line, the
insulating rod and the insulator are placed in parallel, so the
influence of the insulating rod on the electric field distribution
will be different.
(2) Theoretically speaking, to find the lowest point of the
electric field intensity near the faulty insulator, it is necessary
to take continuous and gapless points. The method adopted in
the experiment is to take one measurement point for each
insulator instead of continuous sampling.
IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a new detection method for faulty insulators
with an optical sensor as the main component was proposed.
and a detection experiment was conducted. Comparing the
experiment results with the theory, the feasibility of this
detection method was verified. The experiment results show
that the deterioration of the insulators at the high-voltage side,
low-voltage side end and the middle can be reflected by the
electric field measurement results, this shows that the method
of detecting faulty insulators described in this paper is
promising for practical applications on transmission lines.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work is supported by project: Research on axial
electric field detection and deterioration analysis technology of
transmission line insulator(2020YF-54), which is sponsored by
State Grid Corporation of China.
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