Fouling flash is one of the important reasons that threaten the safe and stable operation of power system, and the difference of fouling type will directly affect the size of flashover voltage. Therefore, timely information on insulator fouling type plays an important role in preventing fouling. To this end, a SAM-ED spectral matching based insulator fouling type detection method is proposed. The hyperspectral data of different fouling type samples are collected, and the noise and other interference factors are removed by black and white correction and multiple scattering correction (MSC); the spectral data are selected by competitive adaptive reweighted sampling (CARS), and the samples are matched with the reference spectra by SAM-ED spectral matching method in the characteristic band and full band range, respectively, and the samples are classified according to the matching results. The experimental results show that the SAM-ED spectral matching method is more effective than the spectral angle matching method and the minimum distance method, and the accuracy of SAM-ED spectral matching based on the full wavelength data can reach 95%, and the accuracy of SAM-ED spectral matching based on the characteristic wavelength data can reach 98.33%.<通讯作者>刘益岑(1986-), 男, 硕士, 高级工程师, 研究方向为电网防灾减灾及在线监测等