Journal of Electrostatics 66 (2008) 526530

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Journal of Electrostatics
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/elstat

Prediction of equivalent salt deposit density of contaminated glass plates using articial neural networks
M.A. Salam a, *, S.M. Al-Alawi b, A.A. Maqrashi b
a b

Department of Electrical and Communication Engineering, Institute of Technology Brunei, Brunei Darussalam Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Sultan Qaboos University, P.O. Box 33, PC 123, Oman

a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history: Received 13 December 2005 Received in revised form 11 February 2008 Accepted 29 May 2008 Available online 2 July 2008 Keywords: Glass plates Tap water Distilled water NaCl ESDD Articial Neural Networks

a b s t r a c t
Contaminants are deposited on the outdoor insulator surface due to environmental conditions. Conductivity or Equivalent Salt Deposit Density (ESDD) normally expresses this contamination on the insulator surface. In the laboratory, NaCl, tap water and distilled water are used for measuring conductivity and ESDD. In addition, different sizes of glass plates are used as an insulating medium. A conductivitymeasuring instrument (Cond 300i) is used to measure the conductivity of the salt-solution. Based on the experimental data, the relationship between the different variables (temperature, salinity, salt, type of water, plate size and sigma) and the ESDD are modeled using articial neural networks. The developed model showed a good predictive success with R2 value above 0.98. This value indicates high accuracy for both model development and the model generalization capability. The meteorological variables (temperature, salinity, salt, type of water, plate size, etc.) with the greatest inuence on ESDD are also identied using the weight partitioning method. It is found that glass plate size is the variable that has the greatest effect on the prediction of the ESDD since it has a contribution of 47%. The volume conductivity at different degrees had a contribution between 12.38% and 12.87%, while the type of water, the salt quantity, the salinity, and the temperature used had a contribution percentage of 7.92, 7.92, 7.43, and 4.46, respectively. The investigation indicated that the ANN models are well-suited for predicting the contamination level to prevent ashover on the insulator surface and for analyzing the contribution of the different factors affecting this contamination level that are represented either by the ESDD or the conductivity. Additionally, the ANN models can be extended for other applications in which nonlinear relationships are observed. 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Insulators used in outdoor electric power transmission lines are exposed to outdoor environmental contaminations. Depending on the nature and the duration of exposure, deposits of wind-carried industrial, sea and dust contaminants build up on the insulator surface as a dry layer. The leakage current path through a layer of dry contaminants on an insulator surface is capacitive wherein the current amplitude is small and sinusoidal. The dry contaminant layer becomes conductive when exposed to light rain or morning dews. As wetting progresses, the leakage current path changes from capacitive to resistive with simultaneous increase in current amplitudes. This increased leakage current dries the conducting layer and forms dry bands around the areas with high current density. These dry bands interrupt the current ow and most of the

* Corresponding author. E-mail address: masalam@itb.edu.bn (M.A. Salam). 0304-3886/$ see front matter 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.elstat.2008.05.003

applied voltages are impressed across these narrow dry bands. When these dry bands cannot withstand the voltage then high voltage ashes over the dry bands setting off arcing activity. These arcs merge to form a single large-amplitude arc, which triggers insulator surface ashover. Researchers commonly use the equivalent salt deposit density (ESDD) or the conductivity to assess the contamination level of an insulator surface. Piah and Ahmed Darus [1] have modeled the leakage current in terms of conductivity and other environmental parameters such as humidity, pressure, etc. Vazquez et al. [2] have tested the non-ceramic insulators by a nonstandard method where they expressed the contamination level by ESDD. Farzaneh et al. [3] have proposed the dynamic model of dc arc on an ice surface by considering the contamination level as surface conductivity. Holtzhausen and Vosloo [4] have proposed a theoretical model to calculate the ashover voltage of an AC energized post type insulator. In their study, conductivity is used to represent the contamination level on the insulator surface. Topalis et al. [5] have studied the critical ashover voltage of the insulator with the variation of surface conductivity as well as ESDD. Ling An

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527

et al. [6] have designed two sensors to measure the contamination level on the insulator surface. They also studied the relationship between the solution conductance and ESDD of the insulator. Sundarajan et al. [7] have studied the insulator ashover voltage by considering the contamination level as ESDD and conductivity. Akbar et al. [8] have investigated the insulator performance at different regions of Saudi Arabia and expressed the minimum ashover voltage in terms of ESDD. Therefore, the relationship between the conductivity and ESDD is very important to nd the contamination level either in terms of ESDD and conductivity on the insulator surface. In this paper, both ESDD and surface conductivity of different sizes of contaminated glass plates are measured using the IEC standard [9]. The relationship between the different environmental factors and ESDD has been modeled using ANN, and the effect of each input variable is identied using ANN modeling software. ANNs are computer programs that are trained in order to recognize both linear and nonlinear relationships among the input and output variables in a given data set. The popularity and acceptance of this technique stems from ANN features that are particularly attractive for data analysis [10].

ESDD

Sa V A

(3)

where, V is the volume of the solution in cm3 and A is the area of the cleaned surface in cm2. The measured salinity, ESDD, and conductivities for tap water are shown in Tables 24. In the experiment, distilled water is also used with the 0.2 g, 0.4 g, 0.6 g, 0.8 g and 1 g NaCl to get the salt-solutions. Here, distilled water is used to compare the results with that of tap water. Three different sizes (200 200 mm2, 150 200 mm2 and 150 250 mm2) of glass sheets are used in the experiment. For distilled water, the experimental results are shown in Tables 57.

3. Articial Neural Networks Articial neural network (ANN) is a research area that has evolved from articial intelligence (AI). On the other hand, articial intelligence is a branch of computer science, which is concerned with designing computer systems that exhibit characteristics associated with intelligent human behavior. ANN and AI provide scientic foundation for many growing commercial technologies, such as, machine learning, expert systems, computer vision, robotics, etc. ANN is a computer program that is trained in order to recognize both linear and nonlinear relationships among the input and output variables in a given data set. Considerable efforts have been placed on the applications of articial neural network (ANN) to the power systems. Several interesting applications of ANN to power system problems have been published [1116], and it has been shown that ANN has great potential in power system on-line and off-line applications. A detailed discussion of the different neural network paradigms and their training and recall operations is out of the scope of this paper. Here, only some of the relevant issues are mentioned accordingly. Details descriptions of ANN are mentioned to some references [1721]. In ANN analysis, the most important step is to develop an effective ANN model with proper input and output variables and data preparation step. This includes identifying the variables of interest, gathering the relevant data and inspecting them for possible errors, missing values, and outliers. Hence, the data for developing the ESDD model is inspected carefully, since data accuracy is vital for the development of efcient models. One of the most common and frequently used ANN paradigms is the Back-Propagation (BP) algorithm [17,18,21]. The BP algorithm uses the supervised training technique. In this technique, the interlayer connection weights and the processing elements thresholds are rst initialized to small random values. The network is then presented with a set of training patterns, each consisting of an example of the problem to be solved (the input) and the desired solution to this problem (the output). These training patterns are presented repeatedly to the ANN model, and the error between actual and predicted results is calculated. Weights are then adjusted by small amounts that are dictated by the General Delta Rule [17]. This adjustment is performed after each completed iteration whenever the networks computed output is different from the desired output. This process continues until weights converge to the desired error level or an acceptable level.

2. Measurement procedure Different sizes of glass plates are used for carrying out the experimental work. The sizes of glass plates are 150 200 mm2, 150 250 mm2, 150 300 mm2, 200 200 mm2, 200 250 mm2, and 200 300 mm2. Initially, NaCl with different weights (0.1 g, 0.2 g, 0.3 g, 0.4 g, 0.5 g, 0.6 g, 0.7 g, 0.8 g, 0.9 g and 1.0 g) are mixed with 200 ml tap water to get the salt-solutions. The glass plate is contaminated by 0.1 g salt-solution and is dried in a microwave oven for 60 s. The dry granules of the salts are then collected by a small brush and again mixed with a 200 ml tap water to get the salt-solution and to nd the conductivity and salinity for the specic areas of the glass plate. This process is repeated for other samples of saltsolutions. The conductivity-measuring instrument (Cond 330i) is used to measure the conductivity of each collected salt-solution. The Cond 330i instrument can measure the conductivity of the salt-solution at different temperatures. At the time of the experiment, the temperature of the solution is also recorded. The measured conductivities are not at 20  C. Therefore, the conductivities at different temperatures are then converted to 20  C temperature equivalent conductivities by the following expression [9] as,

s20 sq 1 bq 20

(1)

where, q is the solution temperature in  C; sq is the volume conductivity at a temperature q  C, in S/m; s20 is the volume conductivity at a temperature 20  C in S/m; and b is the factor depending on the temperature q as given in Table 1. The salinity Sa of the salt-solution is determined from the conductivity s20 by the following formula [9] as,

Sa 5:7s20 1:03

(2)

Finally, the equivalent salt deposit density (ESDD) can be determined by the following expression [9] as,

4. Results and discussion

Table 1 Values of b at different temperatures

q ( C)
5 10 20 30

b 0.03156 0.02817 0.02277 0.01905

Prior to conducting the network training operation using the Back-Propagation paradigm, a data set of 45 cases are obtained from the experimental results outlined in Tables 27. This data set covers the different situations, which are mentioned in the experimental procedures and measurements. For the purpose of model testing and validation, 18% of the cases are extracted randomly from

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Table 2 Values of ESDD and conductivity using tap water and 200 200 mm2 sheet Salt quantity (g) 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0

q ( C)
24.57 24.23 24.73 24.63 25.23 24.20 25.60 24.43 25.73 25.00

sq (S/m)
0.017 0.021 0.024 0.027 0.028 0.037 0.046 0.048 0.053 0.054

s20 (S/m)
0.016 0.019 0.022 0.024 0.025 0.033 0.040 0.043 0.046 0.048

Sa (kg/m3) 0.083 0.102 0.115 0.128 0.133 0.179 0.216 0.237 0.250 0.261

ESDD (mg/cm2) 0.041 0.051 0.058 0.064 0.066 0.090 0.108 0.118 0.125 0.131

Table 3 Values of ESDD and conductivity using tap water and 150 200 mm2 sheet Salt quantity (g) 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0

q ( C)
24.5 25.3 24.9 25.4 24.7 24.4 25.2 24.8 25.8 26.4

sq (S/m)
0.017 0.021 0.028 0.027 0.033 0.037 0.038 0.042 0.046 0.054

s20 (S/m)
0.015 0.018 0.024 0.024 0.029 0.033 0.034 0.037 0.040 0.046

Sa (kg/m3) 0.079 0.098 0.126 0.129 0.158 0.180 0.183 0.204 0.217 0.252

ESDD (mg/cm2) 0.052 0.065 0.084 0.086 0.105 0.120 0.122 0.136 0.144 0.168

Table 4 Values of ESDD and conductivity using tap water and 150 250 mm2 sheet Salt quantity (g) 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0

q ( C)
25.1 25.3 25.3 25.1 25.1 25.2 25.9 24.8 25.0 26.4

sq (S/m)
0.018 0.022 0.025 0.027 0.035 0.038 0.039 0.041 0.046 0.045

s20 (S/m)
0.016 0.020 0.022 0.024 0.031 0.033 0.034 0.037 0.041 0.039

Sa (kg/m3) 0.084 0.105 0.120 0.128 0.169 0.179 0.185 0.199 0.223 0.211

ESDD (mg/cm2) 0.045 0.056 0.064 0.068 0.090 0.096 0.098 0.106 0.119 0.112

Table 5 Values of ESDD and conductivity using distilled water and 200 200 mm2 sheet Salt quantity (g) 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0

q ( C)
26.1 26.0 26.4 25.0 25.1

sq (S/m)
0.006 0.012 0.017 0.028 0.028

s20 (S/m)
0.005 0.010 0.015 0.025 0.025

Sa (kg/m3) 0.028 0.053 0.077 0.133 0.134

ESDD (mg/cm2) 0.014 0.026 0.039 0.067 0.067

Table 6 Values of ESDD and conductivity using distilled water and 150 200 mm2 sheet Salt quantity (g) 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0

q ( C)
25.5 25.5 26.3 24.6 24.7

sq (S/m)
0.004 0.007 0.014 0.015 0.016

s20 (S/m)
0.004 0.006 0.012 0.014 0.015

Sa (kg/m3) 0.019 0.030 0.062 0.073 0.077

ESDD (mg/cm2) 0.013 0.020 0.042 0.049 0.051

M.A. Salam et al. / Journal of Electrostatics 66 (2008) 526530 Table 7 Values of ESDD and conductivity using distilled water and 150 250 mm2 sheet Salt quantity (g) 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0

529

q ( C)
25.9 26.0 26.3 24.8 24.7

sq (S/m)
0.005 0.009 0.014 0.015 0.023

s20 (S/m)
0.005 0.008 0.012 0.014 0.021

Sa (kg/m3) 0.025 0.040 0.062 0.073 0.112

ESDD (mg/cm2) 0.013 0.021 0.033 0.039 0.060

the given data set. Therefore, the training set consisted of 38 cases while the testing set consisted of seven cases. As shown in Fig. 1, the ANN Model used in this work consists of seven input nodes representing temperature, salinity of salt-solution, salt quantity, type of water, sigma at 0  C, sigma at 20  C, and plate size. The output consisted of one node representing the ESDD concentration. The training process is performed using the NeuroShell simulator [22]. After several adjustments to the network parameters, the network converged to a threshold of 0.00001 using three hidden nodes. The hidden nodes are normally placed in between input and output nodes, i.e. central nodes. The trained model prediction is in good agreement with the actual results and the R2 value for the developed model is 0.997. This indicates that approximately 99.7% of the variation in the ESDD value could be explained by the selected input variables and the data used for model development. After training the network successfully, the next step is to test the network in order to judge its performance and to determine whether the predicted results conrm with the actual results. The trained model is then assumed successful if the model gives good results for the test set. Using the seven cases allocated for the testing set, the model-input parameters are entered consecutively for each case and a prediction for the ESDD value is obtained. The results are then compared with the actual results for these cases. The analysis of these results indicates that the R2 value for the testing set is 0.981. The ANN predicted and actual results for both training and testing are shown in the Figs. 2 and 3, respectively. This high generalization capability indicates that the ANN model developed in this work can be used to model and predict the relationship between ESDD and the given input variables. To nd the percent contribution of each of the input variables with respect to the output variables, the partitioning method of the connection weights of the network [23,24] is used. The method involves partitioning the hidden-output connection weights of each hidden neuron into components associated with each input neuron. Details can be found in the above two references since detailed discussion of this method is out of the scope of this paper. Here, only a simplication of the proposed algorithm is presented [25].

1. For each hidden neuron h, divide the absolute value of the input-hidden layer connection weight by the sum of the absolute value of the input-hidden layer connection weight of all input neurons, i.e.

For h 1 to nh; f For i 1 to ni; f jW Qih Pni ih j jWih j i1 Pnh Q 1 ih RI % Pnh hPni g g
h1 i1

Qih

100

2. For each input neuron i, divide the sum of the Qih for each hidden neuron by the sum for each hidden neuron of the sum for each input neuron of Qih; and multiply by 100. The relative

0.16 0.14 0.12 Actual Predicted

ESDD (mg/cm2)

0.1 0.08 0.06 0.04 0.02 0 1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37

Case number

Temperature
0.18 0.16 0.14

Fig. 2. Training results of the developed ANN model.

Salinity of saltsolution

Actual Predicted

ESDD (mg/cm2)

Salt quantity ESDD

0.12 0.1 0.08 0.06 0.04

Type of water used

Sigma at 0C

Sigma at 20C

0.02 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Plate size
Fig. 1. Articial neural network model for nding ESDD.

Case number
Fig. 3. Testing results of the developed ANN model.

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Plate size Sigma at 20 deg

Type of inputs

Sigma at 0 deg Water type Salt quantitity used Salinity Temp. 0 10 20 30 40 50

contribution
Fig. 4. Results of calculating variables contribution for the ESDD model.

importance of all output weights attributable to the given input variable is then obtained. Using this method for the ANN model, it is found that the glass plate size is a variable that had the greatest effect on the prediction of the ESDD since it has a contribution of 47%. The volume conductivity at different degrees had a contribution between 12.38% and 12.87%, while the type of water, the salt quantity, salinity and the temperature used had a contribution percentage of 7.92, 7.92, 7.43, and 4.46, respectively. These results are shown in Fig. 4.

5. Conclusion The potential value of an ANN model as a tool for predicting ESDD based on different variables is mentioned in this paper. The results also offer an insight into the dependence of ESDD prediction levels on the glass plate size and volume conductivity. The developed neural network models ability to consistently produce accurate predictions is very encouraging. The R2 values are found to be high, 0.997 for the training set and 0.981 for the testing set. The high testing set R2 value indicates a high generalization capability of the developed model. The relative importance of the various input variables in the ANN model is also investigated. This study provides clear evidence for the potential value of the neural network approach for capturing the linear and non-linear interactions between ESDD levels and the input variables used and for the assessment of the relative importance of these variables.

References
[1] M.A.M. Piah, Ahmad Darus, Modeling leakage current and electric eld behaviour of wet contaminated insulators, Power Engineering Letters, IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery 19 (1) (January 2004) 432433.