The future of vacuum switchgear

The paper looks briefly at the development of vacuum interrupters to date, discusses limitations to the existing technology of Vacuum Switchgear, what these are, and also how these may be overcome. It then moves on to discuss new developments in Vacuum Interrupter/ Vacuum Circuit Breaker technology which are likely to have an impact on the next generation of devices. Finally, it looks forward ten years to what the impact of these developments may be on the use of Vacuum Circuit Breakers, and what switchgear and power systems may look like in the future.