Assessing the Impact of Long-Term Operation, Pollution and Housing Damage on the Medium Voltage Surge Arresters Using Non-Destructive Diagnostic Techniques

Surge arresters installed in substations and overhead lines play a fundamental role in limiting atmospheric and switching overvoltages. In principle, surge arresters help to protect devices against fatal damage by choosing the specified protection level below the equipment withstand voltage. The reliability of surge arresters is still an important topic in many studies. Pollution and damage affect the performance of surge arresters and significantly impact their lifespan. It is necessary to analyze pollution problems and the effect of internal or external damage of surge arresters to find out the possibility of failure. The paper focused on an extensive study of medium voltage surge arresters from different manufacturers in various operation time, surface contamination, and damage types. In this study, we investigated new, used, damaged, and polluted metal-oxide medium voltage surge arresters to determine how these problems affect the performance of the surge arrester and whether the selected parameters exceed the standardized values defined in the standards. Research deals with the volt–ampere characteristic, Fourier analysis, reference voltage, and active losses to analyze the surge arrester’s performance.