As a process to improve the insulation performance of VIs (Vacuum Interrupters), AC voltage conditioning is generally adopted by many manufacturers. Although the insulation performance is enhanced easily with AC Voltage conditioning, it has limitations when high recovery voltage is required due to high voltage rate or capacitive current switching. In particular, impurities such as oxides segregated on the electrode surface can be removed not by the energy level of the voltage conditioning but by the higher energy level achieved by the current conditioning process In this article, the current conditioning was carried out in various conditions and its validity was examined. The current conditioning was processed by changing the amplitude of applied current, arc time, the number of tests, and frequency. The insulation performance and the status of contact surface were checked as well. We concluded that as the applied charge quantity and the conditioning coverage area increase, the conditioning effect is much higher.

The 22.9 kV vacuum interrupter (VI) built-in load bus switcher (LBS), which is most often used as a load switch for distribution, extinguishes the arc that occurs during normal load opening and closing and fault current interruption within the VI housing to quickly switch circuits. As a protective device for contact separation, the rated current is supplied in a normal state. When a fault current flows due to a fault or an accident in the power system, the contact is disconnected in a vacuum state to block the fault current. In this study, in order to design the optimal VI, the heat dissipation characteristics of VI according to the center electrode distance 0/1/2/3 cm were analyzed by applying the finite element method, and the results were reflected to improve the structure of the VI.

Copper-chromium alloys have been used as contact materials of vacuum interrupters in circuit breakers, but new materials with highly stable performance are required to break the high voltage and high current barrier due to the recent increase in breaking capacity. In this paper, a new contact material was fabricated from a ternary alloy instead of existing Cu-Cr alloys. Its breaking performance and endurance were verified from a synthetic test and compared with that of various contact materials. The test results verified that the breaking performance of the new contact material was excellent.

A vacuum Interrupter (VI), a core part that composes the breaking part of medium-voltage vacuum circuit breaker (VCB), has the excellent insulation performance and arc-extinguishing capability. SF6 gas had been used for the external insulation of VIs since the dielectric strength of SF6 gas is superior to that of other insulation gases. However, because of environmental problems related with global warming, a solid-insulated technology was recently researched. The functionally graded material (FGM), as changing spatially the distribution of the relative permittivity inside an insulator, can reduce the electric field stress at the specific region. Especially, the external insulation performance of the VI with the molded FGM insulator is greatly improved as compared with that of the existing VI or the VI with a new external shield. In this paper, the effectiveness of this FGM insulator is verified by the numerical simulation.