Online Condition Assessment of Interruption Chamber of Gas Circuit Breakers Using Arc Voltage Measurement

As a key element of a power system, a circuit breaker (CB) requires regular maintenance. Intelligent online condition assessment is increasingly becoming a requirement for key items of power plants, including CBs. The interruption chamber, as the most critical part of the CBs, plays an important role in the proper operation of CBs. Online assessment of this part is difficult from a technical perspective due to the high noise level and presence of a transient recovery voltage. This paper proposes a set up for the online measurement of the CB arc voltage during trip/close operations. In addition, a method has been proposed to evaluate the remaining useful lifetime of the interruption chamber based on the measured arc voltage and current. The setup and the proposed approach are verified experimentally.