Development of a flexible high resolution high voltage impulse voltage analysis system

In their normal operating environment, high voltage devices often are exposed to voltage forms that differ from the main intended voltage forms. For most high voltage devices this natural operating environment is the power grid. One group of possible voltages to occur in this environment are the so called impulse voltages, very short high voltage pulses with very high energy content. Some are caused internally (switching operations inside the grid), some are of external cause (lightning strokes). In most cases these impulse voltages are superimposed to the actual operating voltage and have amplitudes well beyond the actual operating voltage. For the high voltage devices to be able to withstand these impulse voltages, standards like the IEC 60060series describe the exact procedures for testing high voltage devices with impulse voltages already during their design phase or before going into operation. Within these standards, many forms of impulse voltages are defined: lightning impulses, switching impulses, front chopped lightning impulses, tail chopped lightning impulses to name only a few. Generating and measuring these voltages, often a few Megavolts in amplitude, is technically challenging. Evaluating the form of these impulse voltages and assuring that the impulses to meet the requirements stipulated in the standards is another challenge of its own. Today, even normal PCs offer extremely high computational power and vast amounts of memory. Combining these with digital PC oscilloscopes with custom APIs makes the development of such an impulse voltage analysis system comparatively easy and cheap. In addition to the new system's hardware, a new software, fulfilling the new 2013 IEC 61083-2's [2] requirements has been developed. This paper will show insights into the development of the impulse voltage analysis system at the University of Duisburg-Essen's high voltage laboratory.