Berlin 2005 – scientific programme

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P: Plasmaphysik

P 5: Niedertemperaturplasmen / Plasmatechnologie 2

P 5.2: Talk

Friday, March 4, 2005, 15:00–15:15, HU 3038

Thermal Interruption Performance of High-Voltage Circuit Breakers — •Christian M. Franck, Alexander Steffens, and Martin Seeger — ABB Schweiz AG, Corporate Research, Segelhof, CH-5405 Baden-Dättwil

Circuit breakers are the key component to ensure reliability and security of present power transmission and distribution systems. Modern high-voltage (U_r > 72 kV) circuit breakers are rated to interrupt short-circuit currents up to 80 kA_rms and ABB’s latest generator circuit breaker even up to 200 kA_rms (U_r=30kV). They consist basically of a mechanically operated metal contact system with an arc quenching chamber to extinguish the switching arc that is ignited during opening. The thermal interruption capability of a HV circuit breaker is determined by the maximum voltage steepness applicable without any time delay after breaking at current zero of a large fault current. New breaker designs are routinely tested experimentally for their thermal interruption performance in synthetic circuits in high-power laboratories. The installation, maintenance and operation of these labs and the performance of the tests are extrememly cost and labour intensive processes. Modern CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) tools are thus increasingly used to understand the interruption capability of high-voltage circuit breakers. With such a tool, developed and validated at ABB Corporate Research, a systematic study of the influence of the gas blow pressure and the nozzle geometry on the thermal interruption capability was done. Latest results of both, experimental tests and numerical simulations of the thermal interruption performance of HV circuit breakers are shown and compared.