Estimation of Compression Dead-end Clamp Temperature to Identify Hot Spot of Transmission Power Line by Steady-State Heat Balance and Pitting Corrosion

Corrosion on the compression dead-end clamp shoes, bolt, or nut can create a loose connection and leads to a hot spot. Due to the annealing effect, this hot spot will decrease the tensile strength of aluminum strand and steel core. For condition-based maintenance, the clamp and conductor temperature difference estimation identify a dead-end clamp hot spot. The difference is calculated by assuming the temperature is quadratic to the current. This assumption is inaccurate because of the balanced heat flow rule. This paper shows the implementation of a new equation to estimate clamp temperature by considering the ambient environment. The average estimation error of clamp temperature is 7.05% and conductor temperature is 4.32%. High estimation error can be caused by several unpredictable changing variables such as wind gusts and heat radiation of sun and clouds. Elevated temperature over a long period of operation time can be estimated by the pit corrosion growth. The corrosion rate increases further in the clamp high-temperature operation.