In order to sustain transmission grid availability and reliability it is imperative that the condition of vital and costly high voltage equipment is ascertained on a continuous or regular basis. It is necessary to establish the effective diagnostic tools or surveillance devices that can be used to assess equipment condition. Emphasis has been placed on refining well-established and more novel but developing condition assessment techniques. It is important to note that condition assessment of equipment also allows the opportunity to predict failure. Based on a complete and systematic assessment, the failure of defective equipment may be evident or predicted in time, thus preventing a forced outage and loss of valuable 'system minutes'. It has also become necessary to extend the life of existing equipment since most of them are reaching the end of their useful life. Replacement strategies have proven to be ineffective due to financial and resource constraints experienced by utilities. Life extension is the work required to keep equipment operating economically beyond its anticipated life, with optimum availability, efficiency and safety. One of its principal components is condition assessment, with the possibility of predicting remnant life. As a result, refurbishment projects are then raised. Refurbishment by replacement, uprating, modifications or change of design of certain key components to extend the life usually requires a substantial amount of capital to be invested. These projects must be economically justified. This thesis focuses on establishing condition assessment techniques for major power equipment such as power transformers. Assessment techniques for instrument transformers and circuit breakers are included, since these are commonly replaced or modified under refurbishment projects. An experimental investigation was carried out to determine the effectiveness of integrating data of two diagnostic techniques i.e. dissolved gas analysis (on-line) and acoustic detection of partial discharges. It was found that there is a correlation between data obtained from an acoustic detection system and an on-line single gas (Hydrogen) analyser. By integrating the data of both on-line monitoring systems, the diagnostic process is further enhanced. In addition, the location of a fixed discharge source was verified by using an acoustic detection system. Further, the sensitivity of the acoustic technique to partial discharge inception voltage, relative to the established electrical detection technique was determined for the experimental arrangement used. The results obtained indicated that this is an effective technique for the evaluation of activity within a transformer structure. / Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2004.

This dissertation investigates the role that is played by high temperatures of air gaps on the breakdown voltage levels under DC positive and negative polarity applied voltages. Due to past experience of AC transmission lines tripping as a result of sugar-cane fires that occur under these lines during cultivation seasons, this study was initiated to investigate this effect under DC applied voltages. Results were obtained from laboratory work conducted and these were closely analysed to understand the behaviour of air gaps under these conditions. A 17mm2 square-cut brass rodrod electrode configuration was used to carry out these tests at the various air gap temperatures. These were induced by a gas burner for both the positive and negative polarities at 200C – 3000C for the 10 mm – 150 mm air gap range and 200C – 1500C for the 200 mm – 500 mm air gap range. Later particles were introduced into the air gap to determine the subsequent behaviour. These were introduced vertically from the top into an air gap via a vibrating micro sieve mechanism to regulate the consistency of the introduction of these particles in the air gap. A reduction of 55% and 50% was observed on the breakdown voltage under positive and negative polarity applied voltages respectively from ambient conditions to 3000C. Additionally the breakdown behaviour of both negative and positive DC was found to be linear which is similar to the AC case. However, air gaps subjected to positive DC applied voltages were found to portray an inferior dielectric strength as opposed to the equivalent negative DC polarity. The study found that the effect of particles in the air gap is practically negligible and that for practical purposes, only the temperature effect plays a role due to the reduced air density at high temperatures. Empirical models for both the positive and negative DC polarities have been proposed by the study that incorporate the effect of the temperature in the air gap to enable the determination or prediction of the breakdown voltage level at various temperatures. These models may be utilised for DC transmission line design for servitudes in areas that are known to be prone to fires. / Thesis (M.Sc.Eng.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2012.

Thesis (PhD)--University of Stellenbosch, 2002. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The main aim of this research programme was to compare the relative performance of different insulator materials used in South Africa when subjected to a severe marine pollution environment. A test programme and procedure, test facility and instrumentation were established. Some novel instrumentation and monitoring equipment were developed and built specifically for this research programme, supported by data analysing software programs. In order to compare material performance only, all non-material design variables between the test insulators had to be removed (e.g. creepage distance, connecting length, inter-shed spacing, profile, etc.). To achieve this some of the test insulators had to be specially manufactured. Leakage current, electrical discharge activity, climatic and environmental data was collected successfully over a one-year test period, starting with new test insulators. The peak and energy values of the leakage current were identified as the two main parameters needed to describe the leakage current activity on the test insulators. A correlation was found between the climatic and environmental data and the leakage current data, and it was found that the leakage current can be determined successfully from some of the climatic and environmental parameters monitored by using multiple regression techniques. Surface conductivity and energy were found to be the best parameters to show the maximum and continuous interaction of the insulator material surface with the electrolytic pollution layer. A natural ageing and pollution test procedure was developed, which has become a South African standard and is gaining international acceptance. A model and hypothesis are proposed to describe the electrical discharge activity that takes place on the test insulators and explain the difference in leakage current performance of the various materials. Keywords: Insulator, Pollution, High Voltage, Leakage current, Material performance. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die hoofdoel van hierdie navorsingsprogram was om die relatiewe prestasie van verskillende isolatormateriale wat in Suid-Afrika gebruik word te vergelyk in 'n swaar besoedelde marine omgewing. 'n Toetsprogram en prosedure, toets fasiliteit en instrumentasie is gevestig. 'n Paar nuwe instrumente en moniteer toerusting is ontwikkel en gebou spesifiek vir hierdie navorsingsprogram, gesteun deur data analise sagteware programme. Ten einde slegs materiaalprestasie te vergelyk, moes alle nie-materiaal ontwerpsveranderlikes tussen die toetsisolators verwyder word (bv. kruipafstand, konnekteer lengte, tussen-skerm spasiëring, profiel, ens.). Om dit reg te kry moes sommige van die toetsisolators spesiaal vervaardig word. Lekstroom, elektriese ontladingsaktiwiteit, klimaat en omgewingsdata is suksesvol versameloor 'n een-jaar toetsperiode, beginnende met nuwe toets isolators. Die piek en energie waardes van die lekstroom is identifiseer as die twee hoof parameters wat nodig is om die lekstroomaktiwiteit op die toetsisolators te beskryf. 'n Korrelasie is gevind tussen die klimaat- en omgewingsdata en die lekstroom data, en dit is gevind dat die lekstroom data suksesvol bepaal kan word van sekere van die klimaat- en omgewingsparameters wat gemoniteer is deur veelvoudige regressie tegnieke te gebruik. Oppervlakskonduktiwiteit en energie is gevind die beste parameters te wees om die maksimum en kontinue interaksie van die isolatormateriaaloppervlak met die elektrolitiese besoedelingslaag aan te toon. 'n Natuurlike veroudering en besoedeling toetsprosedure is ontwikkel, wat 'n Suid-Afrikaanse standaard geword het en besig is om internastionale aanvaarding te wen. 'n Model en hipotese word voorgestelom die elektriese ontladingsaktiwiteit wat op die toetsisolators plaasvind te beskryf en om die verskil in lekstroomprestasie van die verskeie materiale te verduidelik. S/eufelwoorde: Isolator, Besoedeling, Hoog Spanning, Leek stroom, Materiaal prestasie.

In the design of most of the modern systems, lightning threat needs to be considered at the design phase itself. This demands a suitable model and owing to associated complexity, only simplified modeling have been attempted. As a consequence, it does not provide adequate insight into the phenomena. Considering these, a more realistic time-¬ domain electromagnetic model for the return stroke current evolution has been developed by incorporating the following underlying physical processes: (i) excitation formed by the electric field due to charge distribution along the channel, cloud and that induced on ground, (ii) the transient enhancement of series conductance at the bridging regime, which initiates the return stroke,( iii) the non¬linear variation of channel conductance along with (iv) the associated dynamic Electromagnetic Fields(EMFs) that supports the current evolution. The intended modeling begins from the instant of bridging and the pre-¬return stroke charge distribution along the channel is calculated using Charge Simulation Method(CSM). For the calculation of dynamic EMFs, the thin wire Time Domain Electric Field Integral Equation(TD¬EFIE) is employed The transient enhancement of conductance at the bridging/streamer region is emulated using Toepler’s spark law while that along the matured section of the channel is described by first order arc model. The macroscopic physical model developed depicts most of the salient features of current evolution and resulting remote electromagnetic fields in a self¬ consistent manner. The work is not limited by the simplifications adopted for the channel geometry. The strength of the model was exploited for investigating a couple of practically important questions, one of which had divided opinion in the literature. Firstly, analysis showed that the "secondary" current waves generated by successive reflection within struck TGO and that fed by branches do not get reflected at the main wave front. It is shown that the dynamic spatial resistance profile of the channel at the main wave front is primarily responsible for this behavior. Secondly, it is shown that the abrupt change in radii at TGO ¬channel junction is mainly responsible for reflection at the junction. In summary, a novel time-¬domain macroscopic physical model for the first return stroke of a downward cloud¬-to-¬ ground lightning has been successfully developed, which is capable of providing much deeper insight in to the complex phenomena.

Multilevel inverters have advantages over two-level inverters such as reduced THD, ability to operate at low switching frequencies, reduced switching losses etc. Moreover, higher voltage levels can be handled with devices of lower voltage rating. The main disadvantage with the multilevel configurations compared to the two-level inverter configuration is the increase in the number of power devices required and the circuit complexity, which necessitates complex control schemes that add to the cost. Also, the reliability of the converters comes down as the number of devices increases. Reduction in complexity and modularity are desirable characteristics for the multilevel inverters. Open-end winding Induction Motor (IM) drive configurations are shown to have advantages over the motor drive schemes with isolated neutral. The DC-link requirement in case of open-end winding structures comes down to half the voltage rating of the conventional NPC inverters. The DC- link requirement in case of open-end winding structures comes down to half compared to that of the conventional NPC inverters. The number of switching states is higher in the case of open-end winding configuration compared to multiplicity of switching states of conventional NPC inverters, which gives a control flexibility that can be used for optimizing the hardware requirements. Taking advantage of the flexibility given by open-end winding configuration, this thesis proposes schemes which have reduced power circuit complexity. Non-sinusoidal voltage fed IM drives suffer from the problems related to the common mode voltage (CMV) generated by the inverters. This CMV causes bearing currents and shaft voltages which in turn cause increased conducted EMI, ground loop currents and premature bearing failure. A three-level scheme was proposed for an open-end winding Induction machine in the literature, which completely eliminate the CMV variation from the pole voltages as well as the phase voltages. This configuration uses 24 controlled switches and two isolated DC-sources. In this thesis, three-level inverter schemes with CMV elimination and reduced power device count for an open-end winding IM drive are proposed. The first scheme gets the reduction in switch count by sharing the top inverter of the three-level scheme and the second scheme achieves the same by sharing the bottom inverter. This way, the number of controlled switches comes down to 18 from 24. Another problem with multilevel inverters is the large number of isolated DC-sources required to achieve the multilevel inversion. Reducing the number of isolated supplies and using capacitors to split the voltage levels poses the problem of capacitor voltage balancing. A four-level inverter with both CMV elimination and capacitor voltage balancing for an open-end winding IM drive is proposed in this thesis. The motor is fed by two four-level inverters from both the sides. A closed loop capacitor voltage balancing scheme is implemented and the redundancies in the switching states are used for achieving the capacitor voltage balancing and thereby reducing the total number of DC-link to two. The control scheme is independent of the load power factor and maintains the balance in the entire modulation range. A five-level inverter scheme is proposed for an open-end winding IM drive in this thesis. It requires only two isolated DC-sources to achieve the five-level inversion. The motor is fed by one NPC three-level inverter from one side and a two-level inverter from the other. The inverters on either side share the DC-sources. Common mode voltage in the phases are made zero in an average sense using sine-triangle modulation in the proposed scheme so that the common mode currents through the phases are suppressed. The maximum fundamental voltage that can be obtained at the phase is limited to 0.5Vdc. DC-link requirement of the inverter scheme is half of that of conventional five-level inverter scheme because of the open-end winding structure. The two-level inverter, which should withstand half the DC-link voltage, is always in square wave operation and hence the switching losses are very less. All the schemes are simulated extensively in MATLAB/Simulink and experimentally verified on laboratory prototypes under V/f control. TI Motor control DSP and Xilinx CPLD/FPGA are used for generation of the PWM signals for the schemes. The inverters are switched at around 1.25 kHz to keep the switching losses low. Due to laboratory constraints, the experimental verification is done on low power prototypes. Nonetheless, the generality of the schemes allow them to be used for medium voltage high power applications.

In the recent years, there has been a trend to run metallic pipelines carrying petroleum products and high voltage AC power lines parallel to each other in a relatively narrow strip of land. The case of electromagnetic interference between high voltage transmission lines and metallic pipelines has been a topic of major concern since the early 60’s. The main reasons for that are: • The ever increasing cost of right-of-ways, suitable for power lines and pipelines, along with recent environmental regulations, aiming to protect nature and wildlife, has forced various utilities to share common corridors for both high voltage power lines and pipelines. Therefore, situations where a pipeline is laid at close distance from a transmission line for several kilometers have become very frequent. • The rapid increase in energy consumption, which has led to the adoption of higher load and short circuit current levels, thus making the problem more acute. Due to this sharing of the right-of-way, overhead AC power line field may induce voltages on the metallic pipelines running in close vicinity leading to serious adverse effects. This electromagnetic interference is present both during normal operating conditions as well as during faults. The coupling of the field with the pipeline takes place either through the capacitive path or through the inductive or conductive paths. In the present work, the induced voltages due to capacitive and inductive coupling on metallic pipelines running in close vicinity of high voltage power transmission lines have been computed.The conductor surface field gradients calculated for the various phaseconfigurations have been presented in the thesis. Also the electric fields under transmission lines, for both single circuit and double circuit (various phase arrangements) have been analysed. Based on the above results, an optimum configuration giving the lowest field under the power line as well as the lowest conductor surface gradient has been arrived at and for this configuration induced voltage on the pipeline has been computed using the Charge Simulation Method (CSM). For comparison, induced voltages on the pipeline have been computed for the various other phase configurations also. A very interesting result is that the induced voltage on the pipeline becomes almost negligible at a critical lateral distance from the center of the powerline and beyond which the induced voltage again increases.This critical distance depends on the conductor configuration. Hence it is suggested that the pipeline be located close to the critical distance so that the induced voltage would be close to zero. For calculating the induced voltage due to the inductive coupling, electromotive force (EMF),induced along the pipeline due to the magnetic field created by the transmission line has been calculated. The potential difference between the pipeline and the earth, due to the above induced EMFs, is then calculated. As the zones of influence are generally formed by parallelism, approaches, crossings as well as removals, the computation involves subdividing the zone into several sections corresponding to these zones. The calculation of voltages is carried out at both the ends of the sections. Each section is represented by an equivalent π electrical network, which is influenced by the induced EMF. The induced EMF is calculated during faulted conditions as well as during steady state conditions. Inductive coupling calculations have been carried out for the following cases: •Perfect parallelism between powerline and pipeline. •zone of influences formed by parallelism, approaches, crossings and removals. It has been observed that when the pipeline is approaching the HV transmission line at an angle, then running parallel for certain distance and finally deviating away, the induced voltage is maximum at the point of approach or removal of the pipeline from the transmission line corridor.The induced voltage is almost negligible near to the midpoint of the zone of influence. The profile of the induced voltage also depend on whether the pipeline is grounded or left open circuited at the extremities of the zone of influence. Effect of earth resistivity and anti-corrosive coatings on induced voltage has also been studied. For mitigating the induced voltage on the pipeline,numerous low resistive earthings have been suggested. Results show that significant reduction in induced voltage can be achieved as the number of earth points is increased.

The Eskom Transmission Network experiences an exceptionally high number of line faults, the cause of which, may not be correctly identified. This thesis analyses a number of all the possible factors responsible for causing these faults. The objective is to assign probable causes of these faults and that the correct preventative or corrective measures may be planned. The percentage of unexplained line faults is estimated to be 35 % of the total system faults. It is important for the Transmission Group of Eskom to minimise the number of faults. Major efforts to minimise identified faults such as bird streamers, veld fires, sugar cane fIfes, lightning and a hypothesised light pollution, light wetting mechanism has been undertaken by the transmission grid authority. This thesis presents an analysis of the statistical data of the unknown faults (unknown faults is defined as lines that trip due to a reason which could not be identified) that has been undertaken. This analysis takes into account a number of categories of causes of line faults. The period, for which the performance of the lines was analysed for was the years inclusive of 1993 to 1997. The investigation has focused on the identification of the under-performing lines of the main Transmission Network. The identified poorly performing lines have been compared with each other from the perspective ofthe following variables: • Region • Voltage (System Voltage) • Climatic Data Line faults - Time ofDay analysis • Line Faults - Time of Year analysis. The analysis indicates that the majority of unexplained flashovers occur between 22 :00 and 07:00 the following morning (Britten et al, 1999). Almost all of the under performing lines in South Africa fall in the sub-tropical/humid climatic area. All the lines studied are insulated with standard glass disc insulators. The analysis indicated that most of the unexplained line faults occur during the months when the seasons change, e.g. from autumn to winter. The analysis further indicates that most unexplained line faults occurred during the months of April to May and August to September. Of note is that during the period of this investigation bird guarding was performed on some lines. Installing bird guards may reduce those line faults that are caused by bird streamers. However, the bird pollution (deposited on glass disc insulators) that is not washed off at the same time as the bird guard installation may cause the line to trip due to the combination of the pollution and wetting resulting in a pollution type flashover. This is a possible cause of some unexplained line faults that occur from April to May. Bird streamers are also identified as the most probable cause of the unexplained faults which occur during the late evening periods (22:00 - 00:00). Pollution (with wetting) during the early morning periods may result in faults for the period 00:00 to 02:00. Line faults in the early morning periods (04:00 - 7:00) could be due to bird streamers or pollution and wetting, depending on the time of year in which the faults occurs. / Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2003.

The management of parallel and series resonance conditions is important for ensuring that harmonic levels are managed on utility networks, and that shunt compensators are able to operate without constraints for various network conditions (states). For these and similar problems, harmonic impedance assessment of the ac network is required for the design of ac filter or shunt capacitor bank installations. This is particularly important for large installations connected to HV or EHV systems, because resonances at these voltage levels tend to be highly un-damped resulting in potentially damaging voltage and current amplification. The objective of this dissertation was to develop and demonstrate a design methodology which makes use of network impedance assessment methods to provide robust harmonic integration of large shunt compensators into a transmission and HVDC systems. The design methodology has two aspects. The first part considers network modeling, evaluation of different models and simulation of harmonic impedance. In the second part, methods of analyzing and assessing the simulated harmonic impedance are developed. A detailed step-by-step approach was taken in the development of the design methodology. The methodology was documented as a guideline and accompanied by the development of an Excel tool that can be used to assess the simulated harmonic impedance. The Excel tool permits a systematic assessment of the simulated network impedance where shunt compensators are integrated into transmission systems. The tool also ensures that the design of transmission and HVDC ac shunt compensation is optimally robust in terms of harmonic resonances. The theoretical and computational review has been tested and demonstrated on the existing Eskom Transmission system through several case studies. The results have shown the merits of the design methodology. / Thesis (M.Sc.Eng.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2013.

Mémoire (M.Sc.A.)--Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, 1985. / Document électronique également accessible en format PDF. CaQCU

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