Surface charging on HVDC spacers considering time-varying effect of temperature and electric fields

The dynamic behavior of surface charging on spacers in DC-GILs can be influenced by multi-factors including the non-uniform distributed electric field as well as the time-varying temperature gradient. In this paper, the time-varying effect of surface charging phenomenon on spacers is studied and a time-varying mathematical model is established, based on the influence of temperature and electric field on the ion mobility at the gas phase and the bulk conductivity in the solid phase. The results verify that the bulk conductivity can be greatly influenced by temperature, which leads to an increase in the surface charge density on the spacer. This allows the surface charge accumulation to stabilize more quickly. However, the ion mobility from the gas phase is less affected by temperature. When the non-uniform distributed electric field changes from 1.3 to 6.4 kV/mm, ion mobility is less influenced and the surface charge density on the spacer varies slightly. In this case, the effects of the non-uniformly distributed electric field in surface charge density variation is much smaller and can be ignored.