Study on the Surface Discharge Process of Insulators and Its Influencing Factors Considering Quantum Transition

Outdoor insulators work in harsh environments in power transmission and distribution systems, which are prone to various types of particle attachment defects such as fog, icing, sand dust, and bird droppings. These defects may cause the decline of insulation performance and the distortion of electric field distribution. The operating and environmental random factors will accelerate the evolution of insulation failure, and cause flashover failure in serious cases. The existing research mainly focuses on the experimental test, and there is still a lack of in-depth research on the insulator surface discharge mechanism and quantitative calculation methods of discharge voltage. In this paper, an ionization model of insulator surface particles based on quantum transition theory is established. The influence mechanism of active salt component type and non-uniform pollution on the initial discharge voltage is analyzed. The experimental results show that the calculated results of the insulator surface discharge voltage based on the quantum energy level transition are consistent with the experimental values, which is helpful to promote the improvement of the insulator surface gas discharge theory.