Overhead Line Insulator Inspection

Background

The power distribution lines in Oman face an irritating problem in their overhead line insulators located across each pole. Over time, these insulators wear off due to many factors, such as being covered in ionized dust that creates flashover across the insulator. Another factor is the overhead line insulators being cracked or punctured; these physical damages lead to insulators failures. Once the insulator fails, the whole line will trip due to a short circuit in the system. This will lead to service interruptions to the customers that are being supplied by the affected transmission line. The loss of service will affect the utility company revenue and will impose additional costs due to a decrease in clients’ service time and the penalties, as well as the amount of money needed to discover the failure, which could take hours to solve the problem.

In the period between January and October of 2019, Muscat Electricity Distribution Company (MEDC) recorded 239 outages, and 38% of them were unplanned outages. The causes of these unplanned outages in distribution lines are mainly caused by failures in the line insulators.

The key purpose of this project is to design and implement a drone system that is capable of inspecting and detecting the faulty insulators of the overhead line in power transmission lines.

Results