Modeling of VCB for reactor bank switching

Vacuum Circuit Breakers are having excellent current quenching capability. This high frequency current interruption is termed as virtual current chopping. While switching of low inductive loads using VCB there is generation of transient recovery voltages across VCB contacts and hence to validate the phenomenon of overvoltage and reignition behavior of VCB, VCB model is incorporated in PSCAD software and this model is used to study the random nature of arcing time, current chopping, dielectric strength and quenching capability of the breaker. A specific network is employed in PSCAD to analyze and results are presented in this paper.