SUMMARYThis paper describes partial discharge (PD) inception and breakdown voltage characteristics of a CO 2 /N 2 /SF 6 gas mixture in a nonuniform field. These voltage characteristics were investigated with ac high voltage by changing the mixture rate of each gas of CO 2 , N 2 , and SF 6 gas and the gas pressure from 0.1 MPa to 0.6 MPa. It was found that adding a small amount of CO 2 gas into a N 2 /SF 6 mixture causes a drastic increase in the breakdown voltage. For instance, when the mixture rate of SF 6 in N 2 /SF 6 gas mixture is 50%, with the addition of 1% CO 2 the maximum breakdown voltage becomes 1.31 and 1.15 times higher than that of a 50% N 2 /50% SF 6 gas mixture and pure SF 6 gas, respectively. Moreover, those voltage characteristics of a CO 2 /N 2 /SF 6 gas mixture were also investigated by changing the electric field utilization factor as well as by applying positive and negative standard lightning impulse voltages in order to discuss the corona stabilization effect, which seems to be one reason for the drastic increase in the breakdown voltage. These results and breakdown mechanism of the CO 2 /N 2 /SF 6 gas mixture are discussed on the basis of the corona stabilization effect and the dissociation energies of the component gases by observing PD light images, PD light intensities through a blue and red filter, and PD current waveforms.