Effects of Climate Change on Medium-Pressure Insulator Insulation and Network Stability

Electrical losses are an unacceptable phenomenon in the power grid, especially the distribution grid, which
has increased in recent years due to climate change in the southern regions of the country (such as reduced
rainfall, water shortages, increased internal and external dust sources, and high air humidity). Among them,
one of the equipment’s that has been affected greatly under these conditions and has consequently increased
technical losses and unwanted outages in the distribution network is insulators, and therefore, the technical
investigation and evaluation of how these problems occur and their prediction can be of great help to
engineers in designing and selecting the correct insulator for such regions. Therefore, in this article, the
climate of the hot and dry regions of southern Iran (a case study of Khuzestan province) was first described,
and then, in order to investigate the effects of the region's climatic conditions on silicon and ceramic
medium-pressure insulators, two parameters, dust and relative air humidity, were selected. Also, insulators
isolated from the network with different pollution levels were used and then subjected to laboratory tests,
which included leakage current and insulator surface resistance. Finally, the modeling of the contaminated
insulator was carried out using EMTP software. The results obtained from this paper indicate that the
current insulators installed in the network were suitable for the conditions before the climate change of
recent years and have lost their efficiency in the network and are now one of the main reasons for the
increase in electrical losses and reliability of the distribution network. The results of the simulations also
indicate the high accuracy of insulator modeling in polluted and desert conditions and can be used in
network analyses.