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Development of an Indoor 40.5 kV Vacuum

Circuit Breaker for Back-to-back Capacitor Bank
Switching Duty
Feng Zhao1,2, Biao Hu1,2 , He Yang2, Youyin Wang3
1 State Key Laboratory of Electrical Insulation and Power Equipment, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China
2. Power Distribution Assembly R&D Group, Electrical Sector APAC Eaton, Shanghai, China
3. State Grid Liaoning Electric Power Company Limited, Economic Research Institute Shenyang China
Sean_fengzhao@126.com

Abstract—Vacuum circuit breaker (VCB) is a mature
technology which is commonly used in medium voltage power
systems worldwide. However, it is still facing challenges to
switch capacitive current, especially for back-to-back
capacitor bank switching. The main reason is that the inrush
current can cause serious damages to the contact surfaces
and further deteriorate the high voltage withstand ability of
the vacuum gap. The objective of this paper is to develop an
indoor 40.5 kV VCB which is exclusively used for back-to-
back capacitor bank switching. The main circuit of this VCB
adopted vacuum interrupter series technology, which
adopted different contacts (CuW and CuCr), separated
functions and specified operation sequence to deal with the
challenges of high frequency inrush current and withstanding
of (1-cost) recovery voltage. In order to satisfy the frequent
operation duty, permanent magnetic actuator and simplified
linkage arrangements were used during mechanical designing.
The type tests were successfully passed, showing that no
restrike or NSDD occurred during 1200 A back-to-back
capacitor bank switching test. The mechanical life reached
30,000 cycles, and the short circuit current interrupting
capability was 31.5.
Keywords—Capacitor banks Switching; Vacuum Circuit
Breaker; Vacuum Interrupters; Inrush Current;
I. INTRODUCTION
Vacuum circuit breaker (VCB) is a mature technology
which is commonly used in medium voltage power
systems worldwide. However, some special operation duty,
e.g., back-to-back capacitor bank switching in power
substations, still remains challenges for VCBs because of
the making inrush current (4250Hz, 20kA peak) and
withstanding of (1-cosɷt) shape recovery voltage with
long period. Usually, this reactive compensation duty
needs frequency operations of VCB. The statistical results
showed that this operation duty should be executed once or
twice a day [1-2]. Bonfanti et al concluded that 60% of all
the capacitor banks were switched up to 300 times a year
and a further 30% were switched up to 700 times a year[3].
So low restrike probability is highly required as
overvoltage caused by restrike would threaten the stability
of power system.
In order to ensure the back-to-back capacitor bank
switching reliability, SF6 circuit breakers are usually
recommended for this application when the rated voltage is
higher than 40.5kV in China. However, SF6 circuit breakers
is not a best solution in this reaction compensation area as its
relatively low product life and global warming gases. In
contrast, vacuum circuit breaker has unique advantages
such as long product life and environment friendly, which
are required for the duty of capacitor bank switching. Thus,
a high reliable capacitive current switching performance of
VCB is urgently demanded in power system.
Many investigations have been carried out to study the
capacitive current switching performance of VCBs during
recent decades. Kamikawaji et al [4] investigated the
capacitive current switching performance of CuCr material
and found that the main cause of restrikes was micro-
particles. Yokokura et al [5] found that CuW contact
material was the best contact material compared with
CuTeSe, CuBi and CuCr. Yu et al [6] found that CuW10/90
and CuCr50/50 had different pre-arcing behaviors when
making inrush currents. Dullni et al [7] and Körner et al [8]
experimentally revealed the relationship between
prestriking characteristics and restriking characteristics;
also, they investigated the key factors which could impact
capacitor switching performance, such as contact gap and
contact structure. Several researches focused on emission
current: Zadeh et al [9] and Yu et al [10] studied field
emission current measured under recovery voltage after
high inrush currents. Smeets et al [11] observed an
interesting phenomenon of inrush current interruption
which meant that current could remain zero within a period
of time during a prestrike. Zhang et al [12] did a further
investigation. They found that the damages on the contact
surface caused by prestrike arc could impact the above
inrush current interruption phenomenon and further impact
the restrike probability. They proposed a new conditioning
method to improve the capacitor bank switching
performance of VCBs [13]. Delachaux et al [14] found that
higher closing velocity could benefit switching
performance because of less contact welding generated on
the contact surface. Smeets et al [15] and Niayesh et al [16]
studied the late breakdown and NSDD phenomena. Sabot et
al. [17] proposed some kinds of damping circuits to avoid
potential problems for capacitor bank switching. Zhao et al

‹,(((


[18] proposed an outdoor VCB solution, which was using
two VI series technology, to increase the capacitive current
switching performance and achieve zero restrike during
testing.
According to these previous studies, it was indicated that
inrush current, contact materials, contact structures, and
mechanical characteristics etc., played important roles in
capacitive current switching. So far, the performance was
sufficiently improved in 12 kV VCBs. But for 40.5 kV VCBs,
it was still very difficult to achieve the C2 class required IEC
standard. The objective of this paper is to propose an
indoor 40.5kV VCB solution for back-to-back capacitor
bank switching.

II. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP

In this paper, the test was carried out at the ‘China
National Center for Quality Supervision and Test of
Electrical Apparatus Products’ Laboratory. As shown in
Fig 1 , a direct three-phase test circuit was used to verify
the back-to-back capacitor bank switching capability of the
test VCB. The test power was provided by a short-circuit
generator CF through a short-circuit transformer DB. C2
was the load capacitor bank, which determined the value
of breaking current. C1 was the back-to-back capacitor
bank, which determined the value of inrush current during
making operation. YH1/YH2 were used to measure the
power frequency voltages from supply circuit. LH1/LH2 Fig. 2. Overall dimension of an indoor 40.5kV vacuum circuit breaker
were used to measure circuit currents. FY was used to
measure the recovery voltage among the test VCB SWtest.
Fig.2 shows the overall of an indoor VCB. In order to
facilitate convenient retrofitting, the main dimensions were
kept the same as the current indoor SF6 circuit breakers.
The distance between two phases was 300 mm. the
distance between upper and lower contacts was 400mm.
The distance between lower contact and earth was
1100mm. in order to avoiding the impact of surrounding
environment, the three phases adopted embedded pole
designing. For each phase, two vacuum interrupters (VI1
and VI2) were embedded in an epoxy pole. Based on the
different functions of these two VIs, two different contact Fig. 3. Meachnism of an indoor 40.5kV vacuum circuit breaker.
materials were used. The contact material of VI1 was CuCr
and the contact material of VI2 was CuW.

CF: Short-circuit generator; SWBD: Master CB; SWHK: Making CB; Rt1: Power factor resistor; Lt1: Adjustable reactor;
DB: Short-circuit transformer; SWCD: Operation VCB; SWtest: Test VCB; C1: Back-to-back capacitor bank; C2: load capacitor bank
YH1/YH2: Voltage transformer; LH1/LH2: Current transformer; FY: Voltage divider; Rjd: Earthing resistor;
Fig. 1. A schematic diagram of this three-phase back-to-back capacitor bank switching test circuit.

For long product life purpose, these two VIs were

operated by two separated actuators following a certain


sequence. Fig 3 shows the mechanism of this indoor VCB.
Two permanent magnetic actuators were mechanically
linked to the two independent linkages and finally drove
the movement of VIs. Fig 4 shows the operation sequence .
VI2 should be closed and opened before VI1 in normal
operation sequence. The time ΔTc and ΔTo represented the
operation intervals between two VIs.
Table I showed the back-to-back capacitor banks
switching type test conditions according to IEC62271-100
standard and GB1984 standard. A test duty T60 was
carried out as a preconditioning test before the back-to-
back capacitor banks switching test. Then a test duty BC2
which contained a series of 80 “CO” operation was carried
out. Fig.3 showed the test current and recovery voltage.
Inrush current of 20kA peak and frequency of 4250 Hz
flowed through the test VCB during making operation.
Then the recovery voltage with peak value of 85 kV was
applied to the test VCB after interrupting a capacitive
current of 1200 A rms during breaking operation. As last,
a test duty BC1 was carried out for the test VCB. It
contained 24 “O” operations which meant the test VCB did
not suffer inrush current. The capacitive current in the BC1
Fig. 4. Operation sequence of VCB.
TABLE I. TEST CONDITION
Circuit
Test Duty Operation Breaking current
voltage
18.9 kA
T60 O -
%dc ≤20%
BC2 80 CO 40.5 kV
BC1 24 O 40.5 kV
Fig. 5. Peak value of inrush current in test duty BC2 .
duty is 350 A.
III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
As the BC2 test was executed by a directly three-phase
test circuit, the peak values of inrush current varied
according to the making phase angle of source side voltage.
Fig. 5 shows the peak value of inrush current for each
making operation during BC2 test. Some could reach more
than 20 kA and some only were lower than 10 kA. The
average values were 24 kA, 17 kA and 18 kA for 11 for
Phase A, Phase B and Phase C, respectively.
According to previous study, the prestrike arc of inrush
current could be established on both two contacts. Then
the contact surfaces were melted locally. Finally the two
contacts could weld together when VCB closed. Serious
contact welding was formed at inrush current with high
amplitude, which may even cause an opening failure for
normal commercial VCB. But this welding issue can be
resolved by proposed solution. the reason was that the time
interval ΔTc let the prestrike only occurred inside VI2.
Moreover, in order to increase the anti-welding ability,
CuW was chosen as the contact material of VI2. Fig. 5
shows the photographs of contact surfaces. For CuCr
contact, there was only arcing trace. It meant that there
was no welding damage caused by inrush current because
of setting the time interval ΔTc. For WCu contact, there
were lots of damages caused by inrush current. However,
as strong anti-welding ability, no serious welding was
formed on the contact surface. So there was no
significant protrusions which would impact dielectric
(a) CuCr contact (left: movable contact, right: fixed contact)
1200 A
350 A
(b) WCu contact (left: movable contact, right: fixed contact)
Fig. 6. Photographs of contact surfaces
strength of vacuum gap.
Table II shows the restrike probability of this test
VCB during back-to-back capacitor banks switching test.
For both BC2 and BC1 test duties, there was no restrike
TABLE II. RESTRIKE PROBABILITY OF CAPACITOR BANKS SWITHCING
TEST
Test Restrike
Operation NSDD
Duty Probability
BC2 80 CO 0% 0
 BC1 24 O 0% 0
and even no NSDD phenomenon occurred after
interrupting the capacitive current. It meant that this test
VCB had reached requirement of C2 class which was
clarified in IEC standard.
During the breaking operation, a recovery voltage with
peak value up to 2.5 times of the rated voltage applied to
test VCB after current zero. For the normal commercial
VCB, the damages caused by inrush current, such as
protrusions, craters and particles, had strong impacts on
the dielectric strength of vacuum gap. So the VCB was
very difficult to withstand the recovery voltage with long
applying period.
For the proposed VCB, another time interval ΔTo was
set. It means that VI1 was used to interrupt the capacitive
current and also withstand the initial stage of recovery
voltage (0~ ΔTo ms). Usually breakdowns tended to occur
frequently in the initial recovery stage while the ruptures
of the welding area deteriorated the dielectric strength.
However, the situation was improved for this proposed
VCB, as the contact surfaces of VI1 were not damaged by
the inrush current. Thus, the VI1 was easily to withstand
the recovery voltage. Then the VI2 was also opened.
Therefore two vacuum gaps in series collaborated to
withstand the following recovery voltage. It was an
effective way to prevent later breakdowns.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
An indoor 40.5 kV VCB which is exclusively used for
back-to-back capacitor bank switching is proposed in this
paper. Vacuum interrupter series technology was used for
main circuit designing. In order to deal with the challenges
of high frequency inrush current and withstanding of (1-
cost) recovery voltage, two different contacts material
(CuW and CuCr) with separated functions and specified
operation sequence were adopted. The test results showed
that no restrike or NSDD occurred during 1200 A back-to-
back capacitor bank switching test, which met the
requirements of class C2.
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