Modeling and Simulation of Insulation Defects in High Voltage Transmission Lines: Case Study of Onitsha-New Haven 330kv Line

• Post by: airjournal
• April 1, 2022
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ABSTRACT

This thesis is on the modeling and simulation of insulation defects in High Voltage Transmission Lines. The New Haven-Onitsha 330kV transmission line is the case study network. The exposed nature of overhead power lines makes overhead power transmission lines very vulnerable to various kinds of faults. Insulation-related faults contribute reasonably to the number of faults experienced in overhead transmission lines. These faults cause outages in the network and reduce the availability of the transmission lines. Poor transmission line availability means long and frequent outages which imply that industrial and domestic consumers will have to run standby generators for longer times to sustain production and power-dependent domestic activities. Considering that insulation-related faults constitute over 15% of all faults in transmission lines, one viable way of enhancing the availability of transmission lines is by minimizing insulation-related faults. This can be achieved by developing a system that can detect insulation defects in transmission lines. By eliminating these defects before they mature into faults, the transmission line would have been protected from outage thereby enhancing its availability. Having established in the literature that insulation defect in transmission lines is characterized by the presence of partial discharge current pulse; this work was then targeted at modeling and simulation an electrical system that can generate partial discharge and introduce it into the case study transmission line to make work on its detection and elimination fruitful. The three-capacitor-based partial discharge current pulse generator model was adopted for this research. A mathematical design was first done to compute the values of the series and parallel capacitors. The designed model was then implemented in Simulink/MATLAB. The developed model was then connected to a Simulink model of the case study network and then simulated to determine if the implemented model can introduce insulation defect (partial discharge into the test transmission line. Simulation results revealed that as soon as the control breaker opened once at 0.84 seconds, a partial discharge current pulse of amplitude, 5mA was introduced into the case study transmission line.

Keywords: Transmission Lines, Simulation, Insulation Defects, Three-Capacitor-Based

Authorship
Nwani, Emmanuel O.; and Onoh, Greg N. | Full PDF