Moist polluting substances on high-voltage insulator surfaces can cause power-line failures by triggering electric arcs. There are at present no effective methods of measuring insulator pollution levels during normal operations. In this work, we attempt to estimate insulator pollution leakage current (PLC) as an indirect method of measuring deposits in a 30 month period of simultaneously recording leakage current and related environmental variables in substation insulators. We analyzed the relationship between raw leakage current and environmental variables. We canceled out the influence of relative humidity on leakage current by adaptive filtering and then obtained the PLC by filtering out the anomalous peaks in the recording. The proposed method considerably reduces the correlation between leakage current and relative humidity (0.826 vs 0.019). The resulting signal was only slightly correlated with other environmental variables (<0.03), suggesting that the relationships between leakage current and temperature, wind direction and speed are mainly attributable to their influence on relative humidity. The PLC presents a quasi-annual smooth fluctuation over time with a magnitude similar to those obtained in laboratory tests. This novel technique could be used to monitor insulator PLC in real time and thus improve power supply continuity and reduce maintenance costs.
Within the current context of energy transition, the first step to assure cost-efficient and reliable grid operations is the use of adequate planning tools. These tools must evaluate the real needs for reinforcing, replacing and incorporating new network assets considering not only technical and regulatory aspects but also the operational benefits that distributed energy resources (DER) may provide. With this purpose, this paper presents a novel methodology for the analysis and the advanced planning of the active distribution networks in the context of smart grids. The main contributions of the proposed methodology are the following: to incorporate the real capabilities of DER proactively to the planning and operation of distribution networks; to appropriately use the data available in current smart grids; and to promote the efficient use of network capacity in distribution level (efficiency decisions of its users, grid assets in service, access conditions, etc.) through potential operational services, variable in time. The proposed methodology was successfully tested on a real distribution network with 450,000 delivery points on a geographical area of 5000 km2.
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