If one looks back some 30 years or so, large national power companies such as EDF in France, CEGB in the UK or ENEL in Italy were important participants in the development process for electrical insulators. In co-operation with local manufacturers, these utilities often set the applicable standards and testing requirements and sometimes even provided test sites( such as Martigues or Dunkirk in France or Dungeness in the UK) to assess field performance.
But that was the model of the past.
In more recent years, with de-regulation and the refocusing of the utility industry on its core business of electricity supply, such close co-operation with insulator suppliers has diminished and even disappeared … except in a handful of countries.
One of these exceptions is South Africa, where the national utility, Eskom, continues to play a high profile role in the field of insulator development. Indeed, a fixed proportion of turnover is allocated each year to R & D activities that, among other things include monitoring the service environment and assessing performance of different insulator types and designs. Eskom has also helped pioneer new insulator test methods and related monitoring equipment.
INMR travels to South Africa to meet Eskom engineers and also visit substations and lines scattered across the vast Western and Northern Cape.
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