Punjab State Electricity Board, Chandigarh, India
In the area of electrical insulation, inorganic materials such as porcelain and glass have been extensively used for a long time. However, the main problem with porcelain and glass high voltage insulators is that water readily forms a continuous fi lm on their surface. In the presence of contamination, leakage current then develops which may lead to fl ashover that could be followed by an outage of the power system. The need to improve the reliability of power supply, led to the discovery and development of organic insulating materials, i.e., polymer, which is being recently beginning to be accepted as a better insulating material. This paper explains the switchover from inorganic to organic insulators with a specifi c emphasis on the characteristics of the materials and required tests to establish that the polymer insulators have acceptable mechanical and electrical properties.
