As service environments become cleaner, more wildlife and in particular birds return and play a proportionately greater role in what can adversely affect overhead networks. In particular, flashover outages attributed to birds, often included under the category of ‘unexplained outages’, have been a growing problem.

Application of RTV silicone coatings to porcelain and glass insulators in order to increase their pollution performance has been available for decades. Yet not everyone in the industry still appreciates how this coating technology operates and what factors will determine performance and effective service life.

Malaysia’s power system operates in a region of intense lightning activity that adversely impacts performance of certain lines, such as 132 kV Kuala Krai to Gua Musang line located in the northeast and the 500 kV Ayer Tawar to Bukit Tarek line which runs along the western coast of the Malay peninsula.

Since inception, IEC standards 60815-1 to -3 have helped guide engineers charged with specifying insulation for overhead lines and substations operating in polluted service environments. Recently, efforts have been underway to revise this standard to make it easier to implement and a Working Group within CIGRE is being set up with this specific goal.

Energias de Portugal-Distribuição, the main Portuguese DSO, has worked on best practice to restore power in emergency situations and to minimize duration of resulting outages.

The polymer insulator is a kind of insulator that does not use porcelain as the insulating medium at all. For users, the main advantages of this type of suspension and horizontal rod insulators are high mechanical strength, light weight, and excellent performance in high-contaminated areas and under