Benefits of Permanent Travel Measurement in High Voltage Circuit Breaker Online Monitoring

Circuit breaker maintenance based on condition assessment was still rarely in use until ten years ago as reported in the final report of the 2004 – 2007 International Enquiry on Reliability of High Voltage Equipment. Beyond operating time and coil current, measuring the contact travel provides plenty of information. A travel measurement is usually carried out during the routine testing, after which the travel transducer is removed from the circuit breaker under test. A permanent contact travel recording device can enhance the monitoring quality. To provide accurate and reliable travel monitoring it is important to correctly select the travel transducer. In the following sections, the impact of the travel curve on circuit breaker performance is reviewed and some considerations proposed to enable users to properly select a travel transducer that will monitor/survive a breaker operation.

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