Speaker
Hans Schellekens
(Schneider Electric)
Description
Vacuum interrupters (VI's) are used in medium voltage circuit breakers to protect electrical distribution systems. Today the world wide annuel production exceeds 2 million units. Size reduction of VI's and application in solid insulated systems tend to increase the dielectric stresses inside these VI's. Cleaning is a key parameter to obtain reproducible dielectric results. Here the impact of electro-chemical cleaning will be discussed. Although considerable progress is obtained in the dielectric strength over the last 5 years, a great difference persists to exist with respect to Cern published results.
