Investigation of Fast High Voltage PDC Measurement based on a Vacuum Reed-switch

Abstract: The diagnostic technique, polarization and depolarization current (PDC) is useful for insulation testing. It requires applying a DC step voltage to the test sample and measuring the current. To measure fast PDC phenomena a fast step is needed. One way of applying a fast high voltage step is to use power electronic switches. Series connection can be used to increase the voltage limit, but this result in unequal voltage sharing unless equipped with voltage balancing. In this work a high voltage vacuum reed switch is investigated as a simple and low-cost alternative to power electronic switches, handling up to 10 kV with a single device. The switch turn on and off behavior was studied. It was found that the initial turn-on is good, in the range of nanoseconds, but there is a problem with the vacuum recovering its insulating properties at low currents before the contacts fully close. The required output voltage level is therefore obtained only after a further settling time that increases with increased input voltage and is much longer than the initial breakdown, e.g. 20 µs for the case of 4.5 kV input voltage. Other limitations of the fast high voltage PDC were also studied. The output voltage was measured across the test sample without adding an intentional resistor in the circuit. There were large oscillations for 1 µs but these oscillations are damped due to inherent resistance of the connecting leads, series resistance of the capacitors and resistance of the reed switch. A comparison is made between the measured and the simulated results using MATLAB to see the effect of parasitic inductance. A damping resistor was added in the circuit and the output results were again compared. With the addition of the damping resistor, the number of oscillations were reduced and their time scale was limited to 0.1 µs . An analysis is made at the end which describes the limitation occurring in determining the high frequency component of PDC. The current during the step is many orders of magnitude higher than the polarization current even at 1 µs , so measurement of the current and protection of the apparatus is not trivial.