An Indirect Test Circuit for Testing Vacuum Interrupters for Capacitor Switching Duty

Voshall, R. E.; Holmes, Frankie A.

doi:10.1109/tpas.1980.319759

Cited by 9 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 3 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…So VIs with long mechanical lives would be suitable for this duty. However, restrikes in VIs are potentially dangerous as they could cause overvoltage during capacitive current switching duties [4][5][6][7]. Thus a reliable capacitive switching performance of VI is necessary to the power systems.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Capacitive switching of vacuum interrupters and inrush currents

Yang

Geng

Zhang

et al. 2014

IEEE Trans. Dielect. Electr. Insul.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The objective of this paper is to investigate an impact of the inrush current on the prestrike and restrike characteristics of vacuum interrupters (VIs) during capacitive current switching duty. Eleven 7.2 kV VIs are used. Their contact parameters are contact gap 4 mm and contact material CuCr25 (25%weight of Cr). A series of 80 CO operations are executed for each test VI. The amplitude of inrush current I inrush (3800 Hz) is set to 0 kA, 2 kA, 5 kA and 10 kA, respectively. The switching current is less than 1 A rms. The (1-cosωt) shape of the recovery voltage with a peak of 15 kV is applied to the test VI. The experimental results show that the prestrike and restrike phenomena are significantly influenced by the contact surface conditions damaged by the inrush current. The cumulative probability of the prestrike gap d pre follows a 3parameter Weibull distribution. When I inrush increases from 2 kA to 5 kA, the prestrike gap increases accordingly. The 10% d pre increases from 0.5 mm to 0.7 mm. The 50% d pre increases from 0.7 mm to 1.0 mm. The 90% d pre increases from 1.0 mm to 1.5 mm. The scale in the Weibull distribution, which can describe the scattering of d pre , is 0.2 mm and 0.6 mm in the case of I inrush = 2 kA and I inrush = 5 kA, respectively. It is found that the occurrence frequency of the inrush current interruption increases from 37.9% to 68.3% with the increase of I inrush from 2 kA to 5 kA. Moreover, the inrush current also has an impact on the restrike types, which are classified into three types according to the waveform features. The average restrike probability increases from 4.6% to 17.9% and further to 30.4% with the increase of the inrush current from 0 kA to 2 kA and 5 kA, respectively. In addition, the higher the inrush current, the restrike tends to occur earlier during the recovery voltage period.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%