Analysis of Existing Diagnostic Methods for the Linear Insulator Risk-Based Maintenance

The principles of a risk-based approach have not yet been fully implemented in the operation of overhead transmission lines (OHTL) due to the immaturity of the methods and, above all, the lack of diagnostic data on the actual and forecast state of OHTL. The contaminated insulator flashover is the cause of 23-45% of accidents in OHTL. Despite the fact that the accumulation of pollution on insulators is predictable enough, risk-oriented diagnostics of linear insulators is not available yet. This paper provides an analysis of existing methods for linear insulators diagnostics to quantify the insulator state, appropriate for the risk-based approach implementation.