The system’s insulation has to be designed to withstand lightning voltages and be tested in laboratories prior to commissioning.
Exhaustive measurements of lightning currents and voltages and long experience have formed the basis for establishing and accepting what is known as the standard surge or ‘impulse’ voltage to simulate external or lightning
overvoltages. The international standard lightning impulse voltage waveshape is an aperiodic voltage impulse that does not cross the zero line which reaches its peak in 1.2 µsec and then decreases slowly (in 50 µsec) to half the peak value. The characteristics of a standard impulse are its polarity, its peak value, its front time and its half value time. These have been defined in Chapter 2, Fig. 2.23.
Extensive laboratory tests have shown that for external insulation the lightning surge flashover voltages are substantially proportional to gap length and that positive impulses give significantly lower flashover values than negative
ones. In addition, for a particular test arrangement, as the applied impulse crest is increased the instant of flashover moves from the tail of the wave to the crest and ultimately to the front of the wave giving an impulse voltage time
(‘V– T’) characteristic as was discussed in Chapter 5, Fig. 5.45. Figures 8.6 and 8.7 show typical impulse sparkover characteristics for long rod gaps and suspension insulators obtained by Udo10 at various times to flashover.
These figures include the critical or long time flashover characteristics (CFO) occurring at about 10 µsec on the wave tail as well as the characteristics corre- sponding to shorter time lags near the wave crest. Data for both polarities are
shown. The values plotted in Figs 8.6 and 8.7 have been corrected to standard atmospheric conditions.