IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 25, NO.

2, APRIL 2010

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Feasibility Study of Leakage Current Shunting

Method Based on the Ladder Network Model
K. L. Wong and M. F. Rahmat

AbstractThis paper investigates the nonuniformed distribution of leakage current in a wooden pole with the cross arm
attached by using the network ladder model and evaluates the
effectiveness of leakage current shunting arrangements that could
minimize the occurrence of pole fire. The mitigation method
that is proposed in this paper diverts excessive leakage current
from a fire-prone hotspot along the wooden structure by using
a special shunting method. A comparison between the existing
shunting methods and the new cost-effective shunting method is
presented. The findings in this paper will be beneficial toward the
understanding of the current flow in the internal wooden power
pole and, thus, help us to find new methods that can effectively
mitigate the pole fire.

Fig. 1. Wooden pole with cross-arm and supporting steel bars.

Index TermsFire, leakage currents, poles and towers.

I. INTRODUCTION

OLE top fires are one of the main causes of unexpected

power interruption in a distribution network. The pole fires
usually take place during an extended dry session and are more
prone to occur in costal areas where surface pollution on insulators is severe. The essential factor contributing to the pole fires
is contamination of insulator surfaces with precipitation of rain,
mist, and wind. Rain and mist provide high moisture content to
the wooden pole. Experience has shown that fires may occur at
the interfaces between wood and metal under both wet and dry
conditions. The charring process may happen over years before
ignition and discharges may occur at several different zones at
the metal-wood interface [1].
There are several ways to realize the leakage current shunting
method. Ross [2] proposed a shunting metal arrangement at the
pole and cross-arm to reduce the voltage concentration at the
dry area across the wood. The leakage collecting edge of the
shunting device must be located outside of all wind shadows
of the cross-arm or pole and be terminated snugly against the
wetted surfaces of wood. However, this shunting device possesses certain disadvantages, such as reducing the impulse insulation of wood structure and eliminating high resistance which
may tend to increase the magnitude of leakage current at the pole
and cross-arm area. Furthermore, shunt metal is subjected to
corrosion and may aggravate the tree burning condition. On the
other hand, there are other more intrusive methods such as silicone coating to minimise the leakage current [3]. This method
Manuscript received November 17, 2008; revised June 01, 2009. First published October 23, 2009; current version published March 24, 2010. Paper no.
TPWRD-00858-2008.
The authors are with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria 3001, Australia.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRD.2009.2031841

applies silicone coating on insulator surfaces to increase the insulation level and reduce the effect of contamination. The other
way is to install a plastic hood or protective creep-age on the top
of the insulator [4]. This technique is labor intensive, where the
surface of insulators needs to be cleaned up and reapplied after
several years. Sometimes the application process does not cover
every surface of the insulator and needs the line de-energized
during installation. The other alternative includes replacing the
wooden cross arm with a steel cross arm [5]. The cross arm replacement has short-term positive results but it could not guarantee complete pole fire prevention since the main supporting
structure is made of wood.
The first section of this paper presents the complete wooden
pole model and the second section describes the difference between an existing leakage current shunting method and a new
multiphase shunting arrangement. The simulated results of the
wooden pole and the comparison of the two different shunting
arrangements are presented in the final section.
II. WOODEN POLE WITH CROSS-ARM MODEL
A. Model of Wooden Pole With Cross Arm
Cross-arm is one of the important support structures for an
electrical distribution network. In this section, the electrical
model of the wooden pole with cross-arm attachment is presented. The king bolt resistance,
forms the connecting
part between the cross-arm and the wooden pole and steel bars
act as the frame holder as shown in Fig. 1.
Based on the ladder network model first proposed by Filter
and Mintz[6], this paper presents an improved electrical model
for the wooden pole with cross-arm and steel bar holder as de, acts as reference point and the rapicted in Fig. 2. The
of the wooden pole are in series with radial
dial resistance,
of the cross arm. Both
, steel resistances
resistance,
are connected to the second and fourth cross-arm sections with
a small bolt,
to the 13th section of the wooden pole. The

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 25, NO. 2, APRIL 2010

Fig. 2. Electrical model for the wooden pole and cross arm (including steel bar
and king bolt).

Fig. 4. Electrical model for Rosss shunting arrangement 1.

Fig. 5. Shunting Arrangement 2 for cross arm by Ross [2].

Fig. 3. Shunting arrangement 1 for cross arm by Ross [2].

cross-arm heartwood resistance is not included in the cross-arm

model.
III. WOODEN POLE WITH SHUNTING ARRANGEMENT
A. Copper Jumper Arrangement by P. M. Ross
Research on the preventive-measure related to pole fire began
in the 1940s. Figs. 3 and 5 show the possible shunting arrangements to decrease pole fire risk which was originally designed
by Ross [2]. In these arrangements, the four copper bands/sheet
metal were attached to the cross-arm and wooden pole. The detail electrical model is shown in Figs. 4 and 6. Both shunting
and
are conresistances for cross arm and pole,
nected to king bolt with/without two sets of copper jumper to
avoid voltage concentration. In our simulation model, the efin between metal-wood and wooden pole
fects of air gap,
and wooden cross arm junction are taken into consideration.
B. New Multi-Phase Cable Shunting Arrangement
In this paper, a new, cost-effective shunting arrangement
which utilizes three insulated cables to bypass leakage current
at the critical metal-wood junction is proposed. Fig. 7 shows
the proposed leakage current shunting arrangement with cable
terminations located at three possible heights above ground.
The benefits of the proposed multiphase cable shunting arrangement is the low cost implementation and the fact that no
grounding for the shunting cables is required. This arrangement
can be implemented on any new pole or retrofitted to power

Fig. 6. Electrical model for Rosss shunting arrangement 2.

lines that are prone to pole fire. The insulated cable will prevent
any metal edge burning as reported in Rosss work [2]. The
attachment of the cables can be done at the junction between
the bottom shade and the upper surface of the cross-arm or at
the end of the insulator metal support.
IV. RESULT AND DISCUSSION
In the simulation, 11-kV line voltages produce leakage current in the mA range with the assumption that the polluted insu. The wooden pole
lator has an overall resistance value of 1
is presented by 16 sections, where 16 is located at the top of
wooden pole. The wooden cross-arm is attached to the wooden

WONG AND RAHMAT: FEASIBILITY STUDY OF LEAKAGE CURRENT SHUNTING METHOD

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Fig. 8. Radial current distribution of dry wooden pole.

Fig. 7. Multiphase terminating arrangement.

pole at section 14 and the king bolt resistance

in parallel
and the radial
with the radial resistance of the wooden pole
resistance of the cross-arm
. The simulation is focused on
the current distribution of the radial resistance, along wooden
pole section under the dry (11.7% moisture content) and the wet
(22.7% moisture content) condition. Radial current distribution
along 16 sections of the wooden pole provides significant information related to the effect of cross-arm, steel-bar in dry and
wet conditions and the shunting arrangements. Therefore, the
discussion of the sapwood and heartwood are not included in
this section. The next section will discuss the simulation result
performed in the MATLAB environment.
A. Complete Wooden Pole Model
In this paper, we extended the wooden pole originally presented in [6] to include wooden cross-arm, steel-bar holder and
air resistance between the metal and wood interface.
In this section, the following analyses were performed:
1) effect of the steel bar holder;
2) effect of the air resistance;
3) effect of moisture in the wood.
Steel bars used as cross-arm holders are a common practice in
Australia and around the world. It is used to replace the conventional wooden bar holder for its excellent mechanical strength
and durability. For comparison, a wooden pole model with and
without the steel bar is created and the results of the radial current are presented in Fig. 8. The result highlights the effect of
the steel bar especially at pole section 13 and pole section 14
under the dry condition. The introduction of the steel bar holder
causes the radial current at pole section 14 to increase from 0.04

Fig. 9. Radial current distribution of dry wooden pole with cross-arm during
dry condition.

mA to 0.12 mA. The steel-bar bolt,

existence at pole section
13 also creates another current concentration with a magnitude
of 0.15 mA. The installation of the steel bar causes overall resistance changes and results in higher current concentration at
the king bolt, as shown in Fig. 8.
Continuous expansion and contraction of the wood influenced
by the weather effect and varying air temperature, leads to the
. A loose bolt creates an air gap
loosening of the king bolt,
in between metal-wood, the wooden pole and wooden cross
arm junction. Previous reports confirmed that the air gap creates a high-voltage zone across the dry band region which leads
to sparking phenomena across the gap and eventually leads to
pole fire [7]. However, the results in Fig. 9 show that the air
does not give much significant effect in
gap resistance,
term of causing an increase in current concentration at the radial resistance.
Weather also played an important role in pole fire events.
During the dry season, the moisture content of the wooden pole
can be as low as 11.7% and increase up to 22.7% when it is
exposed to rain. Fig. 10 shows a large current spike for wet
conditions at section 13 and 14 of the wooden pole. The radial
current increases from 0.15 to 9 mA in the wet conditions at pole

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 25, NO. 2, APRIL 2010

Fig. 10. Comparison of radial current distribution for complete wooden pole
.
configuration with R

Fig. 12. Comparison of radial current distribution with different terminating

locations under wet conditions.

Fig. 11. Comparison of radial current distribution with different shunting arrangements under wet conditions.

to the mid-pole section, it accomplishes the aim to reduce radial

current concentration at pole section 13.
In real practice, running cables along the surface of the
pole surface to the ground invites vandalism and very often
requires additional work in digging and grounding the cables.
In this paper, we also explore the possibility of terminating
these shunting cables to the mid-section of the wooden pole
in order to reduce the risk of vandalism. Fig. 12 depicts the
results of the multiphase shunting arrangement with the cable
termination at various heights. As depicted, if the termination
point is moved downward from pole section 10 to pole section
4, the magnitude radial current reduced from 3.25 to 1.8 mA.
The reduction in the current magnitude is small and might help
to justify the possibility to terminate the cables at the mid-pole
section.

section 13. This large magnitude leakage current could lead to

pole fire phenomena.
B. Investigation of Different Shunting Arrangements
Leakage current obtained from different shunting arrangements under the wet weather conditions are presented in
Fig. 11. The pattern and magnitude of radial leakage current
at section 13 are almost similar for the pole model without
shunting and Rosss shunting arrangements. The result shows
that the shunting arrangement proposed by Ross did not reduce
the radial current concentration at the king bolt junction. This
is due to the fact that the copper jumpers that tied up the four
copper bands are electrically bonded to the king bolt.
On the other hand, the new multi-phase shunting arrangement
managed to reduce the radial current concentration at pole section 13 and 14. At section 13 and 14, the current reduced from
9.5 to 4 mA and from 6.3 to 1.4 mA respectively. The result
demonstrates that the concept of bypassing the leakage current
from the pin insulator to any middle section of the wooden pole
that is away from the critical metal-wood junction is working.
By diverting the total leakage current from the insulator straight

V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, an electrical model for the wooden pole with
cross-arm has been introduced. The results show that the king
bolt junction displays large current concentration and the steel
bar holder introduced another location of current concentration
at the bolt insertion at pole section 13. The shunting arrangement proposed by Ross did not reduce the radial current by a
large margin. On the other hand, the new multiphase shunting
arrangement successfully mitigates the leakage current from the
critical king bolt junction. As a conclusion, this study proves
that high leakage current concentrates at the metal-cross arm
junction during wet conditions and has less effect in the dry
condition. The proposed multiphase shunting technique gives
promising results and could provide critical clues in future pole
design. The experimental investigation will be carried out in a
high-voltage facility in the near future.
REFERENCES
[1] S. Pathak et al., Investigation of pole fire on a 22 kV wooden power
pole structure, presented at the Electrical Energy Evolution Symp.,
Cairns, Australia, Jul. 2008.

WONG AND RAHMAT: FEASIBILITY STUDY OF LEAKAGE CURRENT SHUNTING METHOD

[2] P. M. Ross, Wood structure burning by leakage currents, Elect. Eng.,

vol. 66, pp. 472474, 1947.
[3] E. A. Cherney, RTV silicone rubber coatings for substation insulator
maintenance, in Proc. Pulp and Paper Industry Technical Conf., 1993,
pp. 170174.
[4] R. J. Chang, M. Shah, L. Mazeika, A. Tsai, and M. Takaseki, Design
of insulators for severe contamination, in Proc. 5th Int. Conf. Properties and Applications of Dielectric Materials, May 1997, vol. 2, pp.
778781.
[5] Report, Bushfire Management Plant 2007- 2008 Western Power,
2008.
[6] R. Filter and J. D. Mintz, An improved 60 Hz wood pole model, IEEE
Trans. Power Del., vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 442448, Jan. 1990.
[7] M. Darveniza, G. J. Limbourn, and S. A. Prentice, Line design and
electrical properties of wood, IEEE Trans. Power App. Syst., vol.
PAS-86, no. 11, pp. 13441356, Nov. 1967.
K. L. Wong received the B.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees
from the RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria,
Australia, in 1997 and 2001, respectively.
He joined RMIT University as a Senior Lecturer
in Electrical Engineering in 2006. He has interests
in the development of novel detection methods
for condition monitoring in power distribution and
transmission systems. He currently holds a patent on
partial discharge technology. He received a research
grant from the Australia Research Council for work
on partial discharge detection using power line
sensing technology.

1137

M. F. Rahmat received the B.Eng. and M.Eng. degrees from the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM)
in 2001 and 2004, respectively, and is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering at
RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
He is a Lecturer with UTM, currently on leave
from RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. His
research interests include power system protection
and security, especially condition monitoring, fault
detection, and developing preventive methods for
pole fire events in distribution systems.