The Experimental Measurements of Surface Leakage Current on the Insulator Model

The insulator is one of the important elements of the transmission system that electrically separates and mechanically connects two points with different potentials. In presented contribution we are focused on the measurement of surface leakage current on the insulator model under various pollution conditions. To simulate environmental pollution, a conductive electrolyte layer with different conductivity was used. Experimental measurements on the physical model point to the fact that the most optimal frequency of the sine wave test voltage is 1 kHz. It has also been shown that surface leakage current is increasing as the degree of pollution increases, under wet conditions. Monitoring the leakage current along the surface of the external insulation may be used as an indicator of contamination of the external insulation.