IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 15, NO.

3, JULY 2000

919

Transmission Line Arrester Energy, Cost, and Risk of

Failure Analysis for Partially Shielded Transmission
Lines
Eva J. Tarasiewicz, Member, IEEE, Finn Rimmer, and Atef S. Morched, Fellow, IEEE

AbstractApplication of Metal Oxide Surge Arresters in power

systems has been traditionally linked to electrical equipment protection. In recent years the industry has noted a very significant
increase in the application of metal oxide arresters on transmission lines in an effort to reduce lightning initiated flashovers. This
paper describes a cost-effective installation of surge arresters on
a partially shielded transmission line. It compares several options
with respect to cost and gains in terms of lightning performance
improvement. This paper also presents a new approach to calculate risk of failure of TLSAs due to lightning strokes to towers,
shield/phase conductors, and illustrates the method with an example for a partially shielded line. Results show that the risk of
failure is very small. The installation of TLSAs completed in 1997
demonstrated that it is possible to afford adequate lightning protection levels by selectively applying surge arresters only to the
towers most sensitive to backflashover and shielding failures.
Index TermsEnergy calculation, lightning performance of
transmission lines, risk of failure analysis, transmission line surge
arresters.

I. INTRODUCTION

RANSMISSION line surge arresters (TLSAs) are typically installed on shielded lines where tower footing
resistance is high, and/or where conventional means to lower
tower footing resistance are not practical. Transmission systems are normally protected with overhead ground wires. For
properly designed lines most lightning strokes to the line are
expected to terminate on the ground wires. However, under
certain conditions, for instance, if the tower footing resistance
is high, there is a high probability of insulation failure following
a backflashover. For any line, there is also a possibility of
a shielding failure, which can lead to insulation flashover.
The probability of occurrence of insulation flashover can be
reduced in two ways: by reducing the tower footing resistance
(not always an easy task) or by installing surge arresters.
The incidence of lightning strokes on transmission lines is
a very serious problem as it can produce dangerous overvoltages and power supply interruptions which result in damage to
electronic equipment and breakdown of critical production processes with costly damages to the product and/or the equipment
[1], [2]. The power quality issue is therefore becoming increasingly important to electric utilities.
Ideally, to entirely eliminate lightning flashovers, surge arresters should be installed on every tower. This is an expenManuscript received June 2, 1999.
The authors are with the Ontario Hydro Services Company, Toronto, Canada.
Publisher Item Identifier S 0885-8977(00)07204-6.

sive solution, and therefore, a selective installation of arresters

should be considered instead.
To find a cost-effective solution to the problem, first, the procedures for estimating lightning performance of transmission
lines have been developed. In these procedures two basic mechanisms that produce flashover of the line insulators were addressed: shielding failures and backflashovers. Then, to be able
to apply transmission surge arresters on long transmission lines
without spending millions of dollars per line, a reduction in cost
installation per line was required in order to:

reduce the cost of new technology, and to

spread the benefits of power quality improvement to

more customers. Therefore, a procedure was required
to optimize the TLSAs placement.
An optimization procedure was developed to analyze individually each transmission line and to determine for each line the
TLSA placement to satisfy customer requirements for a specific
outage reduction at a minimum cost.
II. COST REDUCTION THROUGH SELECTIVE INSTALLATION
The lightning performance of a 115 kV circuit XYZ (total
length 98 km) was about average. Over the past 11 years
(19871997) XYZ has been exposed to 24 lightning faults.
This amounts to 2.23 lightning outages/per 100 km per year.
There have been several instances in which faults occurring
on the circuit resulted in a costly loss of load at a customer plant
supplied by XYZ.
It has been verified that the XYZ transmission circuit was
NOT well shielded against direct lightning strokes to phase
conductors (one shield wire was centered over red and white
phases). The preliminary assessment of the structures (Fig. 1),
with only one overhead shield wire, indicates that the shielding
angle between shield wire and the blue phase is in the order
of 60 deg. The high value of the shielding angle seems to
be consistent with a single day three lightning outages ( all
involving blue phase) and points to a shielding failure problem.
The shielding failure study results indicate that the XYZ
shielding outage rate was in the order of 1.08 per year.
To reduce lightning outage rate of the XYZ circuit due to
shielding failures two solutions are possible:

transmission surge arresters installed parallel to insulation strings of blue phase where required (100% reduction in lightning outages due to shielding failure)

second shield wire (100% reduction in lightning outages due to shielding failure).

08858977/00$10.00 2000 IEEE

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TABLE II
THE STUDY RESULTS ILLUSTRATING THE REDUCTION
LIGHTNING OUTAGES

Fig. 1.

IN

TOTAL

Single circuit structure with one shield wire.

TABLE I
THE EMTP STUDY RESULTS ILLUSTRATING THE REDUCTION IN LIGHTNING
OUTAGES DUE TO BACKFLASHOVER (ONLY)

The XYZ transmission line is supported by both steel and

wood structures in separate sections. The XYZ footing resistances have been measured and were about average. Structure
footing resistances vary from 1300 ohms. For the XYZ steel
tower transmission line only 10% of all tower footing resistances are above 33 ohms, and 16% are above 20 ohms. For the
XYZ transmission line wood pole structures 10% of all tower
footing resistances are above 67 ohms and 62% above 20 ohms.
In spite of much higher structure footing resistances, the wood
pole section of XYZ has better backflashover performance due
to higher line insulation levels (wood arms of the structures).
The backflashover study results indicated that the XYZ
overall backflashover outage rate is in the order of 1.15 outages
per year.
To reduce the backflashover rate two solutions are possible:

reduction of tower footing resistance, e.g., through

counterpoise

transmission line surge arresters installed parallel to

insulator strings to increase the critical current above
which backflashover occurs.
Study results depicting backflashover rate reduction when
SAs are installed on a certain percentage of all towers are shown
in Table I.
Prior to the TLSA installation the calculated lightning performance of the 115 kV circuit XYZ (total 98 km) was as follows:

the backflashover rate: 1.15 outages per year

the shielding failure flashover rate: 1.08 outages per

year

total flashover rate: 2.23 outages per year

By analyzing customer requirements it was determined that in

many cases there was no need to reduce the lightning outage rate
to zero. Significant lightning outage reduction in the range from
6095% proved to be satisfactory to the customer and could
result in substantial savings.
Using the optimization procedure, shielding failure solution
and backflashover solution were combined to maximize the
outage rate reduction.
The results of this process, Options 18, are described below
and presented in Table II [3].
1) TLSAs installed on three phases of selected towers (10%
of all towers, 48% reduction in lightning outages)
2) TLSAs installed on three phases of selected towers (22%
of all towers, 57% reduction in lightning outages)
3) TLSAs installed on blue phase (where required) (67%
reduction in lightning outages)
4) 2nd OHGW (73% reduction in lightning outages)
5) TLSAs installed on blue phase (where required) and three
phases of selected towers (10% of all towers, 88% reduction in lightning outages)
6) 2nd OHGW plus TLSAs installed on three phases of selected towers (10% of all towers, 90% reduction in lightning outages)
7) 2nd OHGW plus TLSAs installed on three phases of selected towers (22% of all towers, 94% reduction in lightning outages)
8) TLSAs installed on blue phase (where required) and three
phases of selected towers (22% of all towers, 95% reduction in lightning outages).
III. ARRESTER ENERGY ANALYSIS
Based on the cost and lightning performance improvements
Option 8 was selected for implementation. Another conclusion

TARASIEWICZ et al.: TRANSMISSION LINE ARRESTER ENERGY, COST, AND RISK OF FAILURE

921

Fig. 2. Three TLSAs installed across three phase insulators.

Fig. 4. Energy E = g (I ) characteristics for TFR =50 ohms and stroke
terminations 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 (Figs. 2 and 3).

(TFR) [10, 50 (Fig. 4), 100, 200 and 300 ], and different lightning stroke currents.
Fig. 4 illustrates energy absorbed by surge arresters for 6 different stroke terminations as shown in Figs. 2 and 3.
For strokes to conductor (3 and 6 terminations) the surge arresters in a three-per-tower and one-per-tower arrangement absorbed almost the same amount of energy (curves 3 and 6 are
overlapping).

IV. RISK OF FAILURE CALCULATION

Fig. 3.

Single TLSA installed across phase insulator.

from Table II was that the cost of retrofitting the existing circuit
XYZ with the 2nd OHGW to improve its lightning performance
(Option 4) was relatively high-78% of the normalized cost. Cost
of Option 4 exceeded the cost of Option 8 (cost 44%) but resulted in less lightning performance improvement (73% versus
95% respectively).
The remaining question, was how well the surge arresters will
perform on partially shielded lines (shielding angle on the uncovered phase conductor over 60 degrees) in terms of energy
absorption and rate of failure.
A comprehensive arrester energy study was conducted and
covered 6 possible scenarios resulting from the two installation
modes included in Option 8:

mode one (Fig. 2)-three TLSAs (108 kv-rating, 84

kV-MCOV) installed across three phase insulators.
mode two (Fig. 3)-single TLSA (108 kV- rating, 84
kV-MCOV) installed across blue phase insulator

where: MCOV-Maximum Continuous Operating Voltage. The

six possible lightning stroke terminations considered in the arrester energy study are depicted in Figs. 2 and 3. The energy results were computed for five different tower footing resistances

The objective of risk of failure calculation was to ensure that

the TLSAs have sufficient rated energy capability to survive
direct strokes to towers and shield/phase conductors (Figs. 2
and Fig. 3). Due to partially shielded design of the transmission line structure there was a certain risk related to the possibility of TLSA failure resulting from a direct stroke to the phase
conductor. Considering statistical nature of lightning strokes
to towers and conductors, the conventional methods cannot be
used to calculate TLSA risk of failure, and therefore, the statistical concepts have to be employed. The maximum lightning
stroke current resulting in the maximum energy dissipation into
surge arrester occurs very rarely, and the energy capability very
rarely decreases to its lowest value, i.e., rated energy capability.
Moreover, the likelihood of both events occurring simultaneously is very small. The statistical method of risk of failure calculation is based on matching the probabilities of SA energy
withstand capability and lightning energy discharged into SA.
The criterion is the acceptable risk of failure. The probability of
arrester failure is given by the cumulative distribution function
. The probability distribution, or density of energy is given
. The probability that the energy stress
by the function
will occur is the probability density function
. The probis
.
ability that the arrester will fail absorbing energy
Hence, the probability of arrester experiencing the energy
from the lightning stroke with the magnitude of the current
and not being able to withstand it indicates the probability of

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 15, NO. 3, JULY 2000

failure at that energy as

. The risk of failure R of
arrester is the sum of all the preceding probabilities for all possible energies [4]:

TABLE III
RISK OF ARRESTER FAILURE DUE TO ENERGY ABSORPTION E
T F R = 10; 50 (FIG. 4), 100; 200; 300

= ( ) FOR
g I

(1)
may be approximated
The probability of arrester failure
by a Weibull cumulative distribution [1]:
(2)
where

ER is the rated energy capability as supplied by the manufacturer (in the study 2.2 kJ/kV-MCOV*84 kV-MCOV 185 kJ)
is the energy withstand capability for the probability of
and
. The rated energy capability is assumed to have
failure
zero probability of failure and is located at four standard deviations below the mean [1]. The probability density function of
can be calculated from the arrester discharge
the energy
energy results obtained in EMTP simulations for various magnitudes of lightning stroke currents. Assuming a log-normal distribution of energy, the general equation for the probability density
for any particular parameter is given by:
(3)
where: and are the parameters of the distribution, i.e., the ex, respectively.
pected value and the standard deviation of
The distribution parameters: and can be derived from the expected value and the standard deviation a of the energy stress
using the following relations [5]:

where:

is the expected value of the energy stress

be calculated from the definition:

and can

is the standard deviation of the energy stress

can be calculated from the definition:

is the log-normal distribution of lightning stroke

current with the general equation for the probability
density as in Equation (3) and the following parameand
ters [6]: logarithmic expected value
of the stroke
logarithmic standard deviation
crest current
is arrester discharge energy versus stroke
current characteristic (Fig. 4)

and

TABLE IV
TLSA RISKS OF FAILURE FOR STROKES TERMINATIONS SHOWN IN FIGS.
2 AND 3 (PER STROKE)

The log-normal energy density function (3) is computed for

each arrester discharge energy versus stroke current character(Fig. 4).
characteristic is unique for
istic
a specific transmission tower geometry, span, footing resistance,
arrester rating, as well as, the waveform representing lightning
stroke current and stroke termination. Energy versus stroke curwere computed for six possible
rent characteristics
lightning stroke terminations depicted in Figs. 2 and 3 and five
different tower footing resistances [TFR=10, 50 (Fig. 4), 100,
200 and 300 ]. Using the algorithm described above for each
characteristic the integral expressed by equation
(1) was calculated numerically. The resulting risks of failure are
presented in Table III.
Note that for strokes to midspan (3 and 6) the energy and
risk decrease as the footing resistance increases. Moreover, risk
values shown in Table III result from energy absorption
per arrester. Following the stroke to midspan (e.g., terminations 3 and 6see Figs. 2 and 3), two arresters at two towers
will be exposed to risks indicated in Table III. Furthermore, the
total risk of arrester failure per stroke to midspan will be more
than twice the risk from Table III if the surge arresters on adjacent towers will also absorb significant amount of energy.
Also, knowing the footing resistances of individual towers,
the towers were grouped in the following ranges 010 ,
1150 , 51100 , 101200 , 201300 . The percentage
corresponding to the number of towers in each range was used
as a weighting factor to obtain the most probable risk of arrester
failure for stroke terminations as per Figs. 2 and 3. The results,
taking all that into account, are shown in Table IV.
The electro-geometric method (EGM) was employed to calculate the number of strokes to towers, shield wire and phase
strucconductors. For the XYZ-98 km long line with
tures the following results were obtained from that calculations
(per year):

number of flashes to towers:

number of flashes to shield wire:

number of flashes to phase conductors:

TARASIEWICZ et al.: TRANSMISSION LINE ARRESTER ENERGY, COST, AND RISK OF FAILURE

Considering that on 98 km long line there are

towers
towers with 1 arrester, the exwith 3 arresters and
pected rate of arrester failure per year is:

where:
ROF(3) is a rate of arrester failure for structure with 3
TLSAs (Fig. 2)
ROF(L) is a rate of arrester failure for structure with 1
TLSAs (Fig. 3)
In the ROF(3)-rate of failure calculation only 88 surge ar) because as indicated in
resters were considered (not
Table IV practically only blue phase surge arresters will be exposed to this risk of failure (due to strokes to blue phase conductor).
Rate of arrester failure in the order of 0.07% per year per
98 km long line was considered very small and acceptable.

923

TABLE V

TABLE VI

V. LINE PERFORMANCE WITH THE IMPLEMENTED SOLUTION

Transmission lines experience outages due to lightning and
other reasons such as: wind, tree branches, foreign objects,
ice, etc. From the statistical data gathered over the past 20 years
the frequency of other outages in the line category as described in this paper was between 1.52 per year. In Table II
presented in Section II the calculated expected lightning performance of the transmission line after implementing Option 8
was 0.11. The calculation was based on measured footing resistances, extensive modeling of transmission lines and lightning
phenomena, given surge arrester characteristics and energy capability, problem-free installations. All of this in real life may
not be perfect, therefore, 0.2 or maybe even 0.3 lightning outage
frequency should be considered. How would all of these factors
reflect on the overall lightning performance of the line when
Option 8 is implemented? In order to shed some light on this
question the five scenarios in Table V were considered.
The outage performance of the line was categorized into 3
different levels and is described in Table VI.
The results from probability calculations assessing the performance of the line in each category (good, average and bad)
are presented in Table VII.
In the overall line outage evaluation the probability of good
and average performance is almost 100% (96.3% in the very
pessimistic scenario).
VI. CONCLUSIONS
1) With transmission surge arresters on all towers and all
phases of the XYZ transmission line the lightning outage
rate is zero but the cost would be 1.0 (normalized cost for
comparison with other optionssee Table II).
2) As a cost cutting measure, surge arresters on blue phase
insulators (where required) and on selected 22% of all
towers (three phases) were considered. This reduced the
total cost of surge arrester installation by more than half

TABLE VII

to 0.44 of the normalized cost. Also, this eliminated 95%

of all lightning failures and resulted in 0. 11 (calculated)
lightning outages per year on XYZ transmission line.
3) To reduce the total lightning outage rate by 5095% at
a fraction of the normalized cost, various surge arresters
schemes could be considered (see Table II).
4) The developed optimization procedure and the installations completed in 1996 and 1997 demonstrated that it
is possible to afford adequate lightning protection levels
by selectively applying surge arresters only to the towers
most sensitive to the backflashover and shielding failures.
This means that arrester protection can be limited to only
those structures, which combine large exposure to lightning strokes with high grounding resistance.
5) Arrester risk of failure for strokes terminating on towers
and shield wire is practically zero. For partially shielded

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 15, NO. 3, JULY 2000

and unshielded lines there is a risk associated with lightning strokes to phase conductors. On partially shielded
lines the number of strokes intercepted by shield wire is
still very high, therefore, the risk of arrester failure due to
strokes to phase conductor is very low.
6) There is no significant difference in the risk of failure
between the two schemes with one and three arresters per
tower. This result from the fact that the main contributor
to the risk of failure is the stroke to phase conductor and in
this case there is very little energy sharing between SAs
on the same tower.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The advice and conversations with B. Hileman of Surge Protective Devices Committee are greatly appreciated.
The authors would like to thank, S. Woodward, G. Babbs, K.
Kopechanski, D. Veljkovic, R. Macey, A. Miron and B. Leonard
of OHSC for their contribution to the project.
The assistance of R. Lambert of EDF in obtaining EGM results is acknowledged.
REFERENCES
[1] A. R. Hileman, Insulation coordination, in Line Arresters: Marcel
Dekker, Inc., 1999, ch. 14.
[2] E. J. Tarasiewicz, Lightning Performance of Transmission Surge Arresters on 115 kV Transmission Line, IWD, CIGRE SC33-95.
[3]
, Analysis of lightning outage reduction versus cost for overvoltage protection of transmission lines, IWD, CIGRE SC33-97, pp.
333.2.
[4] IEC, 71-2, Insulation Coordination Application Guide,.

[5] A. H.-S. Ang and W. H. Tang, Probability Concepts in Engineering

Planning and Design. New York: Wiley, 1975, vol. 1.
[6] CIGRE, (63), Guide to Procedures For Estimating The Lightning Performance Of Transmission Lines,, WG 01 of Study Committee 33, October 1991.

Eva J. Tarasiewicz (M84) received B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Poznan University of Technology in Poznan, Poland. After completing her Ph.D. she was teaching and conducting research at Poznan University of Technology, University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada and McMaster
University in Hamilton, Canada. In 1987 she joined Ontario Hydro where she
works as a Senior Engineer in the System Development Division. She is also
a member of Surge Protective Devices Committee and chair of WG Arrester
Protection and Coordination with Transformer Insulation. Professional interests include: electromagnetic fields, electromagnetic transients, mathematical
modeling of power system components, insulation coordination and surge protection of power system equipment.

Finn Rimmer received B.Sc. in electrical engineering from University of New

Brunswick. He worked for the New Brunswick Telephone Co. and Canada Wire
and Cable before joining Ontario Hydro in 1971. He is currently Manager of
Transmission Line Sustainment Programs in Transmission Network Asset Management of OHSC. He is a corresponding member of CIGRE SC22 WG 13
Management of Existing Overhead Transmission Lines and also a member of
the CEA Interest Group on Transmission Line Asset Management.

Atef S. Morched (F99) received a B.Sc. in electrical engineering from Cairo

University in 1964, a Ph.D. and a D.Sc. from the Norwegian Institute of technology in Trondheim in 1970 and 1972. He has been with Ontario Hydro since
1975 where he is currently the Manager of the Analytical Methods and Specialized Studies in the System Development Division.