Equipment energy storage during vacuum circuit breaker operation

Why are vacuum circuit breakers important?

Operation of vacuum circuit breakers requires relatively smaller operating energy, and this allows the use of simple spring operating mechanisms being both reliable and silent. The advantages offered by vacuum circuit breakers were the driving force in overcoming technological problems.

How do vacuum circuit breakers work?

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative Policies and ethics Vacuum circuit breakers are generally operated with an operating mechanism with smaller operating energy as compared with those of other types of circuit breakers, because the vacuum interrupter employs disc-shaped “butt” contacts instead of finger-shaped...

What is a vacuum circuit breaker?

All other types of circuit breakers rely on some kind of extinguishing mediums such as oil, air, and SF 6, where the electric arc develops in an interrupter. However, the vacuum circuit breaker has a unique feature that the vacuum arc is maintained by ionized metal vapors supplied from the cathode in the negative polarity.

Are vacuum circuit breakers suitable for MV applications?

Vacuum circuit breakers designed for MV applications make low contact strokes (in the 10 mm range), they have low moving masses (Dullni et al. 1999) (in the kilogram range), and they therefore benefit from low operating energy of operating mechanism.

Does a vacuum breaker need a loss-of-vacuum detection system?

This means that adding these vacuum measurement or loss-of-vacuum detection systems may reduce the reliability of the vacuum circuit breaker. There are several vacuum-integrity monitoring devices on the market that test the voltage withstand capability of the interrupter in open position.

Why do vacuum circuit breakers have a stationary open gap?

A stationary open gap of vacuum circuit breakers has a good inherent interruption capability, as demonstrated by the non-sustained disruptive discharges (NSDD). This partly compensates for the lack of reproducibility of dielectric withstand in certain conditions.