Study about the Protection of Automotive Electric Equipment by using Metal Oxide Varistors

Metal oxide varistors (MOV) are the newest and most advanced category of overvoltage protection elements, with obvious advantages. They are manufactured in an extremely wide range of construction, for each voltage level, from telecommunications networks and low voltage electrical installations to high and very high voltage networks, regardless of the type of current (AC or DC). This paper presents an original overvoltage protection module designed to operate in the automotive environment, based on Metal Oxide Varistors. Some design feature and experimental results are also presented in the second part of the paper.