Performance Evaluation of Polymer Insulator using Tracking Wheel and Multi-Aging Test

트래킹 휠과 복합열화시험에 의한 폴리머 애자의 성능 평가

Recently polymer insulators are being used for outdoor high voltage applications. Polymer insulators for transmission line have significant advantages over porcelain and glass insulators, especially for ultra-high voltage transmission lines. Their advantages are light weight, vandalism resistance and hydrophobicity. Polymer insulators are a relatively new technology, but their expected life is still unknown. Therefore these estimating technique are very important. Their life time is related to weathering and operating condition. Multi-aging test is requested because aging factor is occurred by multi-aging than unique aging. The aging test about polymer insulators have mainly carried out by IEC 61109. This paper presents multi-stress chamber experiments and tracking wheel test to examine the tracking and erosion performance of polymer insulator for transmission. Multi-stress testing is able to demonstrate deficiencies of polymer insulator materials and designs, including the nature of interfaces in insulation design. We have investigated IEC 61109 Annex C (5000h aging test) and CEA tracking wheel test as test methods of artificial accelerated aging. The aging degree of polymer insulator is estimated by leakage current, measurement of hydrophobicity degree, damage conditions of insulator surface, withstand voltage test etc.