Advanced modeling and mapping of severe pollution stress required for outdoor insulation coordination

Severe pollution environment over the Israel Electric (IECo) Power Grid is created by synergy between Saharan dust and sea-salt aerosols (SSA) originated from the Mediterranean Sea. In the presence of high air humidity, the resultant pollution stress remains one of the major factors affecting operational reliability of ceramic insulators in the IECo Network. In respect with the severe polluted conditions, the outdoor insulation coordination requires detailed statistical studies and refined geographic mapping of the natural pollution deposit. This paper presents numeric maps of Sea-Salt Sedimentation Rate (SSSR) that was developed for the Eastern Mediterranean region including Israel. The paper demonstrates an adopted meteorological model, calculating algorithm and spatial–temporal characteristics of sea-salt aerosols within the considered domain. The acquired SSSR-Maps have been verified against the Equivalent Salt Deposit Density (ESDD) field-data and available ground-level measurements of SSA-concentrations. Good agreement was obtained between SSA model predictions and ground-based measurements on a daily and monthly basis. A case-study of a joint analysis of desertdust and sea-salt deposition along the selected overhead line was presented. The effect of the sea-salt deposit on the pollution flashover risk of ceramic insulators has been demonstrated. It is showed that the predicted ESDD-values might quite commensurate those ESDD-portions absorbed by desert dust. Hence, the contribution of sea-salt deposit cannot be neglected when evaluating pollution flashover risk for local outdoor insulators, especially in coastal areas. The study outcomes have demonstrated that the proposed SSA-modeling approach has sufficient meaningfulness to be implemented in practical tasks of outdoor insulation coordination and insulators dimensioning.