A Study on the Deterioration Progress of Railway Arresters

철도용 피뢰기의 열화진전에 관한 연구

Arresters are the best protective device on electrical power systems against transient overvoltages generated by lightning and/or switching operation. Nonetheless, arresters will be deteriorated due to absorption of moisture in the environments of its use, repetition in the protective operation to overvoltages, and some defects at manufacturing. It is therefore important to estimate the electrical characteristic changes of ZnO blocks. In this paper, an accelerated deterioration test by a standard lightning impulse current was carried out to extract parameters needed for diagnosing arrester deterioration, and leakage current components were measured. Total energy applied to the ZnO blocks at each time is 1,050[J] in 8/20[${\mu}s$] impulse current. From the experimental results, we proposed electrical parameters and leakage current level to diagnose arrester soundness.