Short and long term behavior of functionally filled polymeric insulating materials for HVDC insulators in compact gas-insulated systems

Abstract

Conventional insulators optimized for high-voltage alternating current transmission tend to accumulate surface and volume charges in direct voltage applications. This is especially true for gas-insulated systems, where the surrounding gas is extremely dry, thus having very low conductivity. This may result in a strong decrease of the dielectric strength of the insulators and can lead to dielectric breakdown, especially when polarity reversals are applied. Main challenges for the development of HVDC insulators are avoiding surface and volume charge accumulations and featuring both suitable capacitive and resistive field distributions. The use of polymeric insulation materials filled with functional fillers of defined low and possibly non-linear, field dependent electric conductivity avoids these charge accumulations. 
Several specimens of polymeric insulation materials of different, controlled conductivities for high field stress applications were produced and experimentally investigated for this contribution. Since electric conductivity depends on parameters such as temperature, humidity or long term ageing, the longterm behavior of the specimens was investigated in 1000 h tests under temperature and electrical field stress. Furthermore, tests in a high-voltage gas insulated test setup were performed in order to determine the dielectric strength of the filled polymers under high electric stationary and transient fields as present in gas insulated systems. Results of these investigations are presented and discussed in detail in this contribution.