Corona as a Means of Minimizing the Electric Current Surge from a DC High-Voltage Terminal

It is often necessary to reduce the total energy released by an accidental spark discharge from a dc high-voltage terminal. The paper presents the results obtained with two experimental setups designed to investigate the effects of inserting a corona element in series with such terminals. The spark discharge onto a 23-cm diameter spherical probe was measured for the same terminal voltage with and without the corona element. Depending on the capacitances of the high-voltage circuit and of the corona element, and on the corona current-voltage characteristics, the reduction of the spark energy may reach one order of magnitude or more.