Materials Science and Engineering B 119 (2005) 13–18

A new on-line leakage current monitoring system of ZnO surge arresters

Bok-Hee Lee ∗ , Sung-Man Kang
Research Center for Next-Generation High Voltage and Power Technology, Inha University, 253 Yonghyun-dong,
Nam-ku, Incheon 402-751, Republic of Korea

Received 23 July 2004; received in revised form 13 December 2004; accepted 17 December 2004

Abstract

This paper presents a new on-line leakage current monitoring system of zinc oxide (ZnO) surge arresters. To effectively diagnose the
deterioration of ZnO surge arresters, a new algorithm and on-line leakage current detection device, which uses the time-delay addition
method, for discriminating the resistive and capacitive currents was developed to use in the aging test and durability evaluation for ZnO
arrester blocks. A computer-based measurement system of the resistive leakage current, the on-line monitoring device can detect accurately
the leakage currents flowing through ZnO surge arresters for power frequency ac applied voltages. The proposed on-line leakage current
monitoring device of ZnO surge arresters is more highly sensitive and gives more linear response than the existing devices using the detection
method of the third harmonic leakage currents. Therefore, the proposed leakage current monitoring device can be useful for predicting the
defects and performance deterioration of ZnO surge arresters in power system applications.
© 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: ZnO surge arrester; Leakage currents; Diagnosis of the deterioration; On-line monitoring device; Time-delay addition method; Lightning protection

1. Introduction The ZnO surge arresters can degrade during its service
due to passage of surge currents, moisture ingress, pollu-
The key job of lightning surge arresters is to clip the in- tion on the external surface, and overvoltages. The leakage
duced voltage transients caused by a lightning strike to a level currents consist of resistive and capacitive current compo-
below the basic impulse insulation level, but above the normal nents. Also, ZnO surge arresters allow more resistive current
operating voltage, of the protected equipments. The lightning to leak with time and surge degradation, and the resistive cur-
surge arrester should be an insulator at any voltage below the rent increases with applied voltage and ambient temperature
protected voltage, and a good conductor at any voltage above, [4–8]. When leakage currents flowing through ZnO surge ar-
to pass the energy of the lightning strike to the ground [1]. resters increase, the surge arresters become thermally unsta-
However, zinc oxide (ZnO) element does not have an infinite ble, which may lead to a serious problem. Thus, the following
impedance, so it will draw a continuous quiescent current at points are important; The ZnO surge arrester leakage current
normal working voltage levels. The absorption of high light- must be detected without the interruption of power supply;
ning and switching surge voltages can lead to performance the resistive leakage current or third-order harmonic current
degradation of ZnO surge arresters and increase leakage cur- component must be distinguished from the total leakage cur-
rents. Thus, electrical engineers need guideline to estimate rent, which includes much capacitive current in the field; and
the residual lifetime of lightning surge arresters in service to ZnO surge arresters must be diagnosed.
improve the reliability of electric power supply in modern Diagnostic evaluation techniques are therefore necessary
electric power systems [2,3]. to assess ZnO surge arresters in service. Non-contact leakage
current detectors must ensure the safety and the continuity
of power supply. For this assurance, on-line monitoring tech-
∗ Corresponding author. niques are preferred. Some monitoring techniques such as the
E-mail address: [email protected] (B.-H. Lee). compensation circuit method and the third harmonic leakage

0921-5107/$ – see front matter © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.mseb.2004.12.053
14 B.-H. Lee, S.-M. Kang / Materials Science and Engineering B 119 (2005) 13–18

current detection method have been used to monitor the dete-

rioration of ZnO surge arresters and to improve the reliability
of electrical power supply in modern power systems [9–11].
The compensation circuit method can detect resistive leakage
current flowing through ZnO elements accurately, but is more
appropriate in laboratory tests rather than in service, because
the test arrester has to be disconnected from the system in the
field, and requires applied voltage measurement, which can-
not be obtained in actual power systems. The third harmonic
current detection method gives a non-linear response for volt-
age within a range of specified current and can gives errors
because of external factors such as the harmonic components
and the capacitive current depending on the stray capacitance
included in the power system voltages and currents. Also, if
harmonic analysis of the total leakage current is employed
without the compensation technique, large errors are intro- Fig. 1. Equivalent circuit model of ZnO elements.
duced by the presence of harmonics in the system voltages
[12]. ity of the applied voltage. Thus, the leakage current under
Thus, the techniques for estimating the residual lifetime steady-state conditions actually consists of odd harmonics
of ZnO lightning surge arresters in service and guidelines as well as the fundamental power frequency. The amplitude
for the electrical engineers are needed. The most desirable of the capacitive component of the leakage current is much
method for checking the state of a ZnO surge arrester is to greater than that of the resistive component in the low conduc-
measure the resistive leakage current in service directly. To tion conditions. Typical values of the resistive leakage current
develop a diagnosis device for evaluating the deterioration of range from 50 to 250 ␮Ap with normal operating voltages de-
ZnO surge arresters in service effectively, we propose a new pending on the temperature and state of ZnO arrester blocks
on-line monitoring technique and device that can detect the [12]. A large amount of the third-order harmonic current is
resistive leakage current flowing through ZnO surge arresters included in the resistive leakage current, this phenomenon
simply, safely, and accurately. The resistive leakage current will be described later in this paper.
is the main factor for evaluating the state of ZnO surge ar- Also, the capacitive current appears at the fundamental
resters. In this work, the time-delay addition leakage current frequency of the applied voltage and its phase leads by 90◦ ,
detection device, which may immediately determine the re- which means that the current waveform leads the applied
sistive current component from the leakage current without voltage waveform by one-quarter cycle. The resistive current
measuring the voltage across the ZnO surge arrester during is a non-sinusoidal waveform, which has the fundamental
normal operation, was designed and fabricated. The results frequency component and odd harmonics, and its peak time
obtained from the laboratory tests are discussed and reported.

2. Principle of measurement

The electrical behaviors of a ZnO surge arrester without

gap are represented by the simplified equivalent circuit model
of the series-parallel RC networks as shown in Fig. 1 [13,14].
The series resistance Rbulk represents the ZnO grain resistance
and the inductance L is due to packaging and the length of
the leads in application. At very large currents, the response
of the ZnO arrester block is mainly the grain resistance Rbulk .
However, the ZnO element behaves like a parallel RC net-
work at working voltage levels. That is, the ZnO arrester
block leakage current for ac power systems consists of the
resistive and capacitive components.
Fig. 2 shows oscillograms of the applied voltage and the
measured leakage current waveforms at 60 Hz power fre-
quency voltages, oscillograms that were obtained by using
Fig. 2. Examples of the applied voltage and leakage current waveforms
the ZnO arrester block leakage current detection device with sensed by the detection device with the compensation circuit: VS is the
the compensation circuit in the previous work [15]. The ZnO applied voltage, IT the total leakage current, IC the capacitive current, and
arrester block leakage currents are independent of the polar- IR the resistive leakage current.
 B.-H. Lee, S.-M. Kang / Materials Science and Engineering B 119 (2005) 13–18 15

The measurement of the working voltages is expensive

and not possible in actual power systems. (e) The resistive and
capacitive currents are calculated by combining the measured
and calculated leakage current waveforms. The algorithm for
calculating the resistive and capacitive currents is described
in detail in Section 3.2.

3. Construction of monitoring system

3.1. Monitoring device and specimens

The leakage current passing through a ZnO element con-

sists of the resistive and capacitive current components.
Fig. 3. Illustrations of the time-delay addition method: (1) applied voltage; Degradation of ZnO surge arresters leads to changes in the
(2) measured current; (3) current in phase-shift; (4) added current; (5) ca- nonlinear V–I characteristic curves and the degradation can
pacitive current; (6) resistive current. generally be detected by measuring the resistive component
and the third-order harmonic of the leakage current. The total
is identical to that of the applied voltage. The resistive current leakage current is not factor in the degradation of a ZnO surge
component is obtained by taking the leakage current at the arrester. A monitoring system has to measure the changes in
instant when the voltage across the surge arrester is at its peak. the resistive leakage current, so only the resistive current com-
The voltage across the surge arrester must be measured with ponent of the total leakage current must be extracted. This is
the leakage current simultaneously. However, in this work, done by removing the capacitive current component from the
to determine the peak value of the resistive current from the total leakage current.
leakage current waveform, the time-delay addition method, Fig. 4 illustrates a schematic diagram of the leakage cur-
which can determine the instant of peak value of the voltage rent detection device based on the time-delay addition method
across the surge arrester without measuring the voltage, is without a compensation circuit that subtracts the capacitive
proposed. Fig. 3 shows the waveforms of the applied voltage current from the leakage current passing through ZnO blocks
and leakage currents, which can be used to interpret the time- under ac applied voltages. This method eliminates the need
delay addition method. for the extraction of the third-order harmonic current, the
The instant of peak applied voltage and the resistive and compensation of capacitive current and the measurement of
capacitive currents can be calculated from the measured leak- working voltages. The on-line monitoring device using the
age current as follows: (a) The ZnO element leakage current is time-delay addition method for in-service ZnO arresters con-
measured at 60 Hz power frequency ac voltage. (b) The mea- sists of two basic units. One is the data detection part com-
sured leakage current is shifted by one-quarter cycle with lag- posed of the highly sensitive leakage current sensor, the dif-
ging phase. (c) The leakage current with phase shift is added ferential amplifier, and the low pass filter that eliminates high
to the measured leakage current. The time of peak added cur- frequency noises. The other part is composed of the A/D con-
rent waveform is identical to the instant of applied voltage verter converts analog signals into digital signals, and a per-
peak, as can be seen in Fig. 3. (d) The peak resistive current sonal computer that acquires and stores analyzed data. With
corresponds to the measured leakage current at the instant the time-delay addition method, the ZnO surge arresters do
of peak added current waveform. That is, the time of peak not have to be removed from the power systems for testing.
applied voltage can be found without measuring the applied Also, the efficiency and reliability of the leakage current
voltage and disconnecting the ground wire. detection device using the time-delay addition method are

Fig. 4. A schematic diagram of the leakage current detection device using the time-delay addition method.
16 B.-H. Lee, S.-M. Kang / Materials Science and Engineering B 119 (2005) 13–18

Table 1 a quarter period [Td = 1/4f] of the operating frequency. Here,

Specifications and electrical properties of the ZnO blocks used in this work we can generate the summation waveforms [f(t) + f(t − Td )].
Diameter 33 mm The value of the total leakage current at the time [Tp ] cor-
Thickness 29 mm responding to the peak value of the summation waveform is
Rated voltage 3 kVrms
Rated discharge current 5 kAcrest
the peak value of the resistive current [f(Tp )], and the value
Maximum continuous working voltage 2.55 kVrms of the total leakage current at the time [Tp + Td ] prior to the
Nominal conduction voltage dc 5.0–5.39 kV at 1 mA one-quarter period of Tp is the peak value of the capacitive
Residual voltage 9.8 kVpeak at 5 kA current [f(Tp + Td )]. Because the fundamental frequency of
the capacitive current is identical to that of the summation
compared with those using third-order harmonic current de- waveform, the capacitive current waveform can be generated.
tection method by verification tests. Series of experiments Therefore, the resistive current waveform can be obtained by
were carried out on ZnO arrester blocks taken from the com- subtracting the capacitive current component from the total
mercial metal-oxide surge arresters without gaps for 18 kV- leakage current.
rated distribution lines, and the specifications and electrical
properties of the specimens used in this work are tabulated
in Table 1. 4. Results and discussion

3.2. Signal processing and data acquisition system 4.1. Leakage current waveforms calculated by the
time-delay addition method
The in-service ZnO leakage current, in the sub-
milliampere range, is detected by the highly sensitive current The data analysis program using LabVIEW tools was de-
probe. The detector signals are amplified by a differential veloped, to display the leakage current waveforms on the PC
amplifier, which rejects common-mode noises. The output monitor, which were transmitted from the on-line monitor-
signals of the differential amplifier are filtered before they ing system using the time-delay addition method. The total
enter the A/D converter through the low-pass filter. Measured leakage current waveform, its phase-shift waveform delayed
and filtered leakage current signal is converted to digital sig- by a one-quarter, the summation waveform of the above two
nal by the A/D converter. The current signals transmitted at waveforms, and the discriminated waveforms of resistive and
the A/D converter are divided into the total leakage current capacitive currents are displayed on the user’s monitor screen
and resistive components by the proposed algorithm calcu- of the PC installed with software using the time-delay addi-
lating the time at the peak voltage by using time-delay ad- tion method.
dition method, and the waveforms of the total, resistive and Fig. 6 shows the examples for the waveforms of the total
capacitive leakage currents calculated by the algorithm are leakage current, its phase-shift waveform by a one-quarter
displayed on the PC monitor. As illustrated in the schematic period, and the calculated resistive and capacitive currents.
diagram of Fig. 5, the algorithm for the time-delay addition This analysis program can display simultaneously the time-
method could be summarized as follows. delay leakage current waveforms, the summation waveform,
After acquiring the total leakage current signal [f(t)], the capacitive and resistive current waveforms as well as the
the software calculates the time-delay current waveforms total leakage current waveform transmitted by the leakage
[f(t − Td )] delayed with respect to the total leakage current as current detection device on the same screen.

Fig. 5. Block diagram of the algorithm for calculating the resistive leakage current using the time-delay addition method.
 B.-H. Lee, S.-M. Kang / Materials Science and Engineering B 119 (2005) 13–18 17

Fig. 7. Leakage current of the ZnO arrester block as a function of applied

voltage.

tion, the peak values of the resistive leakage current wave-

forms obtained from the time-delay addition method were in
good agreement with the peak values of total leakage current
measured at the instant of peak applied voltage.
Fig. 7 shows that the total leakage current at the time of
peak summation waveform is equal to the peak value of the re-
sistive current. Therefore, the directly measured values using
the proposed on-line leakage current monitor agree fairly well
with the data calculated by the time-delay addition method.

4.2. Changes in the ZnO arrester block leakage currents

Series of the measurements of the response sensitivity of

the time-delay addition current detection device were per-
formed as a function of the peak value of the 60 Hz power
frequency ac applied voltage. Fig. 7 shows the V–I charac-
teristic curves obtained by the different measuring methods.
Note that the peak values of the resistive leakage currents
were adopted. The third-order harmonic component of the
leakage current, which was measured by the method for de-
tecting the third-order harmonic current flowing through ZnO
arrester block only, was plotted for comparison. The peak
Fig. 6. User screen of the monitoring software using the time-delay addition
values of the resistive leakage current measured by the time-
method: (a) measured current; (b) current in phase-shift; (c) added current;
(d) capacitive current; (d) resistive current. delay addition method proposed in this work were in good
agreement with the data by the compensation circuit method.
The deterioration of ZnO surge arresters increases the re-
The applied voltage was a low 3.4 kVrms , and the result- sistive leakage current that includes some amount of the third
ing peak values of the resistive and capacitive currents, which harmonic component. That is, degraded ZnO arrester blocks
were in the low conduction regime, were approximately 280 have larger values of the resistive current and third-order har-
and 300 ␮Ap , respectively, as is shown in Fig. 6(a). The phase monic than fine blocks do. These larger values are the reason
difference between the resistive and capacitive currents was why the resistive current component and the third-order har-
one-quarter cycle. Also, Fig. 6(b) shows the measured and monic of the leakage currents should be analyzed to evaluate
calculated leakage current waveforms at the applied voltage the deterioration of ZnO surge arresters. Thus, the resistive
of 3.7 kVrms . The higher the applied voltage, the more se- component in the leakage current can be calculated to find
vere the distortion of leakage current waveform. That is, at the relationships between the third-order harmonic compo-
higher voltage levels, the resistive leakage current became nent and the resistive component in the leakage current. Fig. 8
significantly non-linear. The peak value of the resistive leak- illustrates the relationship between the measured and calcu-
age current was approximately 550 ␮Ap , approximately two lated resistive leakage currents using the proposed time-delay
times the value at the applied voltage of 3.4 kVrms . In addi- addition method. Also the data obtained by the third-order
18 B.-H. Lee, S.-M. Kang / Materials Science and Engineering B 119 (2005) 13–18

delay addition method, a data acquisition system, and anal-

ysis program were developed. The efficiency and reliabil-
ity of the leakage detection device, a computer-aided sys-
tem for measuring the ZnO resistive leakage current, were
verified by laboratory testing. The linearity of the response
sensitivity was considerably improved. The proposed time-
delay addition method can directly determine the resistive
leakage current flowing through ZnO surge arrester with-
out measuring the voltage across the surge arrester in ser-
vice. The developed on-line monitoring device can pro-
vide accurate, safe, and simplified degradation diagnosis
and on-site testing of ZnO surge arresters in actual power
systems.

Fig. 8. Relationship between the measured and calculated leakage currents.

Acknowledgement
harmonic current detection device in the previous work are
This work was financially supported by MOCIE through
presented in Fig. 8, for comparison.
EIRC program.
The third-order harmonic component included in the leak-
age current of a ZnO surge arrester is relatively small. How-
ever, the amplitudes of the third-order harmonic current in-
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