A novel method to enhance the withstand voltage of a composite solid dielectric with imbedded conducting strips is proposed and the resulting electric-field patterns are deduced. The direction of the electric field inside the dielectric is changed to favour a higher withstand voltage in a given direction by using conducting strips located between alternate layers of the solid dielectric. The strips cover only a portion of the insulating layer. A new method is used for simultaneous calculations of (i) the electric field, throughout the region of the composite insulator, and (ii) the bound charge distributions on the conducting strips. The method is based on the nodal analysis. It has been found that the direction of the electric field can be changed to be away from the electrodes, thus leading to an enhancement of the withstand voltage of the composite insulation.