Evaluation of Flashover Voltage Levels of Contaminated Hydrophobic Polymer Insulators Using Regression Trees, Neural Networks, and Adaptive Neuro-fuzzy

Polluted insulators at high voltages has acquired considerable importance with the rise of voltage transmission lines. The contamination may lead to flashover voltage. As a result, flashover voltage could lead to service outage and affects negatively the reliability of the power system. This paper presents a dynamic model of ac 50Hz flashover voltages of polluted hydrophobic polymer insulators. The models are constructed using the regression tree method, artificial neural network (ANN), and adaptive neuro -fuzzy (ANFIS). For this purpose, more than 2000 different experimental testing conditions were used to generate a training set. The study of the ac flashover voltages depends on silicone rubber (SiR) percentage content in ethylene propylene diene monomer (EPDM) rubber. Besides, water conductivity (µS/cm), number of droplets on the surface, and volume of water droplet (ml) are considered. The regression tree model is obtained and the performance of the proposed system with other intelligence methods is compared. It can be concluded that the performance of the least squares regression tree model outperforms the other intelligence methods, which gives the proposed model better generalization ability