Influence of negative ions on the humidity effect on the first corona inception

Abstract

The first corona inception in a divergent electric field is affected by atmospheric parameters. The effect of humidity is a little-debated question and a summary review is first proposed in this paper. Then we present experimental results performed in two different high voltage laboratories. Those two laboratories are located at different latitudes Germany and northern Argentina) in order to put in evidence the effect of humidity on the inception voltage. At high humidity levels, the standard deviation of the probability distributions is clearly reduced whereas the influence of humidity upon the mean values is made up by quite a large discrepancy in the data. Nevertheless, the critical volume model allows the experimental probability distributions to be calculated with the proviso that the negative ion density directly involved in the primary electron production rate is field dependent and not constant as previously assumed. The calculations show that the total negative ion density is exponentially linked to the humidity.