Switching operations in power transmission lines can cause travelling waves on the lines, generating transient overvoltages. The magnitude of these overvoltages depends on the power system voltage magnitude at the closing time and the trapped charge on the line. Surge arresters protect the energy equipment inside substations against the line overvoltages. The number of surge arrester operations is counted by the surge arrester counter. This article focuses on evaluating surge arrester performance in the transmission line switching. For this purpose, a 400 kV power transmission line in Iran is simulated using EMTP-RV software. Then, the probability of operation of the surge arrester counter is obtained using statistical switching. Comparing the recorded practical results by the surge arrester counter with the simulation results demonstrated that accurate simulation of the surge arrester performance requires modelling the corona in transmission lines. In addition, the impact of the transmission line structure on the performance of surge arresters is investigated. The simulation results indicate that if corona is taken into account in the modelling, the probability of counting by the surge arrester counter decreases from 98.6% to 4%. This result aligns with what has been observed in practice.
