Abstract
The flashover phenomena constitutes as one of the important high voltage insulators problems which may cause costly outage for power system. pollution is the most essential element in this phenomena at system working voltage.
In this paper, a research program is executed to investigate the pollution effect on flashover phenomena for south – west Iraqi (132kV) grid insulators routing through desert areas .
In order to carryout the investigation, four typical sites have been selected, for each site one insulators string that suffering from deposition of contaminated substances has been select and brought to high voltage laboratory for checking flashover voltage values.
From the present work it can be concluded that to a large extent, insulators show a significant changes in the electrical performance as exposed to desert environmental conditions like high temperature, humidity and sandstorms .
A significant reduction in flashover voltage is observed as the pollution amount increases, these results have been compared with the new insulators
