Arc Imaging on Capacitive Current Interruption Using a Disconnector with an Auxiliary Interrupter

A series of experiments on the capacitive current interruption using an air-break disconnector (DS) with an Auxiliary Interrupter (AI) is presented. The AI contacts open with much higher speed (average llm/s) than the main contacts of the DS (0.2-0.6m/s). This paper mainly focuses on optical observation of the arc recorded by a high-speed camera. The result shows: (i) The arc brightness is synchronous with the arc current; (ii) The arc brightness increases with the higher current level to be interrupted I_d; (iii) With higher I_d, the afterglow of the arc remnants decay slower.