Reconsidering insulation coordination and simulation under the effect of pollution due to climate change

Climate change and air pollution have a direct impact on the performance and lifetime of insulating materials. In recent years, Mazandaran and Golestan provinces in Iran have witnessed a climate change and an increase in air pollution. This problem increases outages and losses in transmission and overhead distribution network. Moreover, traditional and empirical methods have been used for insulation coordination in past decades. As a result, research is needed on the regional power line isolation, revision of insulated surface design, and the number of insulators used. In this paper, a specialized software was used for checking existing lines in Mazandaran and Golestan Regional Power. Insulation computations and isolation studies using MATLAB software were used to present solutions for transmission and overhead distribution networks. This specialized software has the ability to calculate the required minimum air gap and the minimum creepage distance and the number of insulators with due attention to regional pollution, overvoltage due to switching and lightning, and power frequency.