The operation experiences of power transmission lines show the lightning outage is still the main part of the total outage rate. So it is very important to calculate the lightning overvoltage across the insulators precisely and evaluate the lightning outage of the transmission lines correctly. Lightning flashover criterion of the insulator/gap is one of the most important factors that influence the precise calculation results of the lightning withstand level of transmission lines. In China, several +/- 800 kV ultra high voltage direct current (UHVDC) power transmission projects have been set up in recent years, and the altitude of the regions that the transmission lines across ranges from 0-3650 m. The paper mainly analyzed the influence of the modelling methods of insulator/gap on the lightning withstand level of +/- 800 kV UHVDC transmission lines by PSCAD/EMTDC program. The compared lightning flashover criteria of insulator/gap include the leader propagation model recommended by CIGRE, the volt/time curve recommended by IEEE and an improved leader propagation model, which is proposed based on the lightning flashover experiments of the +/- 800 kV UHVDC line insulators carried out at an altitude of 2100 m. Meanwhile, the influences of lightning current waveform and insulator structure were also considered and compared. The simulation results show that the calculated back-flashover lightning withstand level is much lower when using the improved leader propagation than that using other flashover criterions in the paper, it is lower under the 2.6/50 mu s double exponential lightning current than that under the 2.0/50 mu s Heidler function lightning current, and it is higher when using V-string than that using I-string insulator. Besides, the influences of the lightning current waveform and the insulator structure on the calculation of shielding failure lightning withstand level are little, but the flashover criterion has obvious influences on the shielding failure lightning withstand level.
