Automatic Decision Making of Timing of Insulator Washing in Coastal
Substations by Pollution Prediction Through Event Matching Model
Satoru GOTOt, Masatoshi NAKAMURAt , Takeo WATANABEt and Takaslii TANIGUCHIS
tDepartment of Electrical Engineering, Saga University, Honjomachi, Saga 840, Japan
SKyushu Electric Power Co., Inc., 1-82, Wat.anabe-Dori, 2-Chome, Chuo-Ku, Fukiioka 810-91, Japan
Abstract
Insulators in coastal substations are attacked by
salty wind from seashore and it causes flash-over
and power failures. Hence, the polluted insulators
are washed using much pure water before a flush-
over. In this paper, a method of automatic decision
making of timing for the insulator washing was pro-
posed. The prediction of the amount of pollution
deposit was used for the aut,omatic decision mak-
ing and an event matching model (EMM) was also
proposed for the prediction. The proposed auto-
matic decision making by EMM was evaluated by
the actual data of a coastal substation in Japan
and showed satisfactory results.
1. Introduction
Insulators in coastal substations are frequently
subjected to pollution by the wind with much con-
tent of salt. Insulator pollution is a big problem
which causes flash-over of the insulators and results
long power failures. Damages caused by rapid in-
sulator pollution especially at typhoons were inves-
tigated [l,21. To avoid these accidents caused by
the insulator pollution, the insulators are washed
using pure wat,er before a flush-over occurs,
We have already proposed the automatic decision
making of insulator wasliing[3, 4,51 which auto-
mated the present decision making. However, the
present decision making is not satisfied with re-
gard to the rationality and a inore suitable deci-
sion making is required. In this study, a method
of automatic decision making of washing the pol-
luted insulators in substations is developed by in-
troducing n new prediction inethod using an event
matching model (EMM).
2. Insulator Pollution in Coastal
Substations
2.1 Problem of Insulator Pollution
Strong wind from seashore such as typhoon causes
rapid pollution of insulators. Reference [l] inves-
1996 IEEE Annual Report - Conference on Electrical insulation and Dielectric Phenomena, San Francisco, October 20-23,1996
(0-7083-3580-5)
tigated the serious damages of the insulator pollu-
tion at the Second Muroto Typhoon in September,
1961. It takes only two or three hours to excess
the pollution deposit from hazardous level when
the typhoons attack the substations. The rapid
pollution of the insulators is very dangerous, spe-
cially for coastal substations.
The insulators are washed with much amount of
pure water before the pollution deposits increase
to a critical level. In actual field, the polluted in-
sulators are washed rat,her frequently to avoid the
time lost of insulator washing in live conditions
based on decision making of washing time deter-
mined by human experts. The frequent insulator
washing is costly and was caused by the unreliable
prediction of the insulator pollution by heuristic
manner. The insulator washing requires much man
power and pure water, for example 50 [t] pure wa-
ter per washing, then, the suitable decision making
of insulator washing is required.
2.2 Mechanism of Insillator Pollution
The relationship between weather condition and
pollut,ion process is very important to know the
best timing of the insulator washing. The mecha-
nism of the insulator pollut~ionis explained as fol-
lows (see Fig. 1);
i) Waves and/or wind on sea spout salt particles.
ii) The salt particles are brought to land by wind
from seashore.
iii) The brought salt particles attach to the surface
of the insulators in coastal substations.
The factors for the pollution deposits are summa-
rized as follows:
0 Wind velocity effects on the concentration of
the salt particles in air and amount of collision
of salt particles to the insulators.
0 Wind direction effects on the concentration of
the salt particles in air brought by wind.
 e Wave height effects on the concentration of the
salt particles in air.
e Humidity effects on the percentage of sticking
and much moisture causes the high percentage.
e Rainfall washes the surface of the insulators and
causes the decrease of insulator pollution.
Although there are many factors for the insulator
pollution, in this paper, we mainly concentrated
the two main factors, i.e., wind and rainfall, be-
cause these two factors have main effect to the in-
sulator pollution and they are easy to collect from
a weather bureau near the substation.
3. Automatic Decision Making of Washing
Timing Using EMM
3.1 Basic Idea of EMM
The Event Makching Model (EMM) waq developed
for the precise prediction of pollution deposit,s es-
pecially for the rapid pollution. The experts in
the substation predict the pollution deposits us-
ing the present and past weather conditions. They
memorized the weather conditions of rapid pol-
lution and decided the insulator washing if the
present weather condition was closed to the crit-
ical weather conditions.
The EMM searches the past weather condition
which is closest to the present weather condition
from the point of view of the pollution deposit as
shown in Fig. 2, and then predicts the pollut,ion
deposits from the past pollution deposit, dat,a cor-
responding t o the matched weather condition. The
EMM can be applied for any high nonlinear phe-
nomena such as rapid insulator .pollutions whose
causality holds since it uses the actual existings
for the prediction.
.......
........
1
......
1 .
Rain
1 1
Wind- .......
.......
1 . 1 1 . 1 1
Salt particles
. . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . Humidity
/ LAND
Fig. 1. Mechanism of insulator pollution
3.2 Pollution Prediction Using EMM
The main factor of the pollution increase is wind
and t,he main factor of the pollution decrease is
rain, hence, we consider the effect of the wind and
rain to the insulator pollution, separately. For tlie
comparison of weather in the EMM, the effect of
the wind and the effect of rain are searched by
the past data, independently. Four hours data are
used for the comparison of weather conditions. The
index for the comparison of wind is defined as
3
&(IC) = ( w v ( i ) u 3 ( k- i ) ) (1)
i=O
where v(k - i) is the wind velocity from seashore at
time k - i and ur, ( i ) is the weights of time progres-
sion. Here, the third power of the wind is used for
the index (1) because the index is introduced for
the evaluation of the pollut#ionincrease by wind ve-
locit8yand the pollution increase is approximately
in proportional to the third power of the wind ve-
locity which is called as “the third power rule”[ 13.
The index for the comparison of rainfall is defined
as
3
Ir(k) (ZtJr(i)r(k- i)) (2)
azo
where r ( k - i ) is the rainfall at time L - i and 7 4 ( i )
is the weights of time progression. The weights in
(1) and (2) are exponentially decayed with time as
= U$.(i) = (1/2)i.
ff’*,(i)
The time t: of the nearest wind condition is ex-
tracted according to the equation
t: = argmin IIU,(t)- I,(k)l (3)
and the time t: of the nearest rainfall condition is
extracted according to the equation
t: = argmin
k IIr(t) Ir(L)l. - (4)
1 1
t
. . :.....;
i Comparison !.i:
!
:........................................
........................................................................ :
1
Fig. 2. Comparison of weather information
413
The amount of pollution increase by wind ve-
locity is extracted by the pollution increase rate
per one hour AptU(t:,)at time t:. The amount
of pollution decrease by rainfall depends on the
present pollution deposit p ( t ) . Hence, the pollu-
tion decrease ratio at time t: is introduced and
the amount of pollution decrease is calculated by
-Apr(t:) = (1 - R(dT))p(l). Here, the calculation
of the pollution decrease ratio R ( t f ) , the effect of
wind velocity is subtracted using the conventional
modeling by “the third power rule.”
Finally, the one hour ahead prediction of the pol-
lution deposit are calculated by
+ +
F(i 1) ~ ( t )A p w ( t ; ) +
A ~ v ( t : ) . (5)
The prediction is used for the decision making of
the timing of the insulator washing.
3.3 Algorithm of Automatic Decision
Making by EMM
The insulator washing must be decided when the
pollution deposit of the insulators becomes haz-
ardous level, and unnecessary washing must be
avoided. The automat,ic decision making is based
on the predicttion of pollution deposit and the ac-
curacy of the prediction. The one hour ahead pre-
diction of the pollution deposit (5) is used and the
insulator washing is decided when the prediction
$(t + 1) exceeds the threshold value A, i.e.,
Wash if 8(t+ 1) 2 X
{ No wash if p(t 1) < A.+ (6)
The threshold value X in (6) is selected such that
the percentage of the mis-decision making, i.e., the
flush-over of insulators, is very small. Hence, the
standard deviation of the prediction error U is used
for the selection of the threshold X as
X = pmaz - 4.265~ (7)
where pmamis the maximum allowable pollution
deposit for the hot-line washing. By using (7), t,he
percentage of the mis-decision making is equal or
less than 0.001[%].
4. Evaluation of Automatic Decision
Making by EMM Using Actual Data
4.1 Validation of EMM
We applied the proposed automatic decision mak-
ing to the actual data collected at Karatsu substa-
tion in Japan. The available data are wind veloc-
ity [m/s] , wind direction (16 directions) and rain-
fall [mm/h] in hourly basis, and pollution deposits
414
Table 1 Root mean squa.re of the prediction error
(Karatsu substation, April, September and Octo-
ber, 1904).
EMM Simple
[rng/cm2] collected at variable sampling intervals,
depending on the criticality of weather condition.
The pollution deposits are usually measured every
2 hours in day and every 3 hours in night, and at
the critical weather condition such as typhoon, the
pollution deposits are measured every one hour.
The data collected during April, September and
October in 1994 were used for the evaluation of
the EMM. The prediction of pollution deposit at
each measuring time was used for the evaluation.
The EMM was compared with the simple model
whose prediction of the pollution deposit was the
same as the present pollution deposits. Table 1
shows the root mean squares of the both prediction
error. The error of the EhlM is less than half of
that of the simple method and the results shows
the effectiveness of the EMM.
4.2 Evaluation of Automatic Decision
Making
The proposed automatic decision making is evalu-
a k d by the actual data. The pilot insulator which
is used for the measurement of pollution deposit is
washed as same as the actual insulators in the sub-
station. It is impossible to evaluate the proposed
decision making by the original data of the pollu-
tion deposits because the present decision making
is done when the pollut,ion deposit goes over 0.007
[mg/cm2]. Hence, to evaluate the proposed deci-
sion making method, the virtual data of the pollu-
tion deposits p , ( k ) were constructed as following
procedure.
i) The amount of the pollution decrease by actual
washing is regarded as zero. Then, the one step
ahead pollution deposit of the actual washing
keeps the present pollution deposit. The mod-
ification, however, neglects the change of the
pollution deposit from the washing time to the
next measurement time.
ii) When the automatic decision making decides to
wash the insulators, i.e., the prediction exceeds
the threshold value A, the one step ahead pol-

1 s 10 1s 20 2s 30
Time[day]
Fig. 3. Prediction of the insulator pollution and
results of automatic decision making (Karatsu sub-
station, April, 1994)
Table 2 Washing times of automatic decision mak-
ing and actual decision making by using the vir-
tual data (Karatsu substation, April, September
and October, 1994)
lution deposit is set as the mean of the actual
washed pollution deposits (0.0034[mg/cm2]).
The result of the automatsic decision making are
shown in Fig. 3. In Fig. 3, the actual decision mak-
ing results are also included. As shown in Fig. 3,
the proposed automatic decision making decided
the washing when the virtual pollution deposits are
closed to the maximum allowable’pollution deposit
for hot-line washing p,,, = 0.03 [mg/cm2].
Table 2 shows the times of insulator washing for
all data. By using the proposed automatic deci-
sion making, the number of washing can be re-
duced and and the virtual pollut,ion deposit never
exceed the maximum allowable pollution deposit
pnaz = 0.03 [mg/cin2]. It indicates that, the pro-
posed automatic decision making required the in-
dispensable washing.
5. Conclusion
A method of automatic decision making for timing
of the insulator washing near coastal substations
was developed. The automatization was based
on the prediction of the pollution deposits by the
EMM. The proposed method was evaluated by
415
the virtual data constructed by the actual data of
the Karatsu substation and proved remarkable re-
duction of number of washings compared to actual
washings. The proposed method has proved iits
effectiveness in reduction of the total cost of the
insulator washing.
Acknowledgment
The authors are grateful to engineers in Saga
branch of Kyushu Electric Power Company for
their valuable comments and data acquisition and
Mr. M. Yamamoto, a master course student of De-
partment of Electrical Engineering in Saga Uni-
versity, for his programming and calculation of the
results.
R,eferences
[l] Electric Joint Research, vol. 20, no. 2 (1964)
(in Japanese).
[2] Electric Joint Research, vol. 35, no. 3 (1970)
(in Japanese).
[3] S. Goto, M. Nakaiiiiira, N. Nanayakkara,
T . Matsunaga and T. Taniguchi: Automatic
Decision Making of Washing the Rapid Pol-
luted Insulators in Substations, Proceedings
of the 26th ISCIE International Symposinrn
on Stochastic Systems Theory and Its Appli-
cations, pp. 167-171 (1995)
[4] S. Goto, M. Nakamura, N. Nanayakkara and
T . Taniguchi. Automatization of Human De-
cision Making for ~VashingTime of Pollntrd
Insulators in Substations. Proceedings of the
34th SICE Annual Conference (1995)
[5] S. Goto, M. Nakamura, N Nanayakkara and
T. Taniguchi: Reliable Automatic Declsicm
Making for Washing the Polluted Insulators
in Coastal Substations, 1995 Conference on
Electrical Insulation and Dielectric Phenoni-
ena, pp. 408-411 (1905)