High voltage laboratory
A high-voltage laboratory , also known as a high-voltage test field or high-voltage room , is a space used in electrical power engineering for the safe and reproducible performance of experiments with high voltage . These are electrical voltages above one kilovolt up to a few megavolts. Due to the necessary safety distances of a few meters and the spatial dimensions of the devices used, high-voltage laboratories are usually housed in a hall.
Applications
High-voltage laboratories are set up as a department in the area of technical universities and, in addition to training and conducting practical courses in the area of high-voltage and energy technology, also carry out high-voltage experiments in the field of research, e.g. to determine the suitability of materials for use as Isolators .
In the industrial sector, high-voltage test fields are used for quality assurance and ensuring limit values for components used for energy purposes, such as power transformers or circuit breakers . Some of these high-voltage technology components are individually designed for use in power stations or substations and must be checked for the promised limit values in the high-voltage test field before delivery.
construction
A high-voltage laboratory is a closed room or hall with grounded, electrically conductive floors and walls that form a Faraday cage so that electrical discharges triggered inside have no effects outside the laboratory .
To avoid electrical accidents , safety guidelines such as the five safety rules should be observed at work . The high-voltage area must not be entered during operation and is secured by appropriate barriers, metal grids, warning lights and signs. The experiments are carried out remotely from a neighboring control room. All electrical measuring lines in and out of the high-voltage area must be shielded and routed through surge arresters such as varistors in order to prevent high voltage from being "carried over" to the outside area.
Test transformers are used to generate high alternating voltages up to around 1 MV . High-voltage cascades (Cockcroft-Walton generator) are used to generate high DC voltages, and Marx generators are used to generate individual pulses, as in artificial lightning discharges . Due to the high voltages and to avoid peak discharges , high-voltage conductors are characterized by large, round outer radii and shapes that appear voluminous.
High-voltage laboratories are usually fed from the public power grid , whereby, due to the high instantaneous power, network perturbations due to shock loads such as short circuits , which can intentionally occur during the tests, must be avoided. For this purpose, among other things, rotating converters are used for the supply, which dampen shock-like effects on the supply network through their flywheel.
Even after the high voltage has been switched off, high voltages can be present in the test field, for example on high-voltage capacitors , which is why the individual system parts must be grounded using a grounding whip before working in the high-voltage field .
literature
- Andreas Küchler: High voltage technology . 2nd Edition. Springer, 2005, ISBN 3-540-21411-9 .
swell
- ↑ Safety rules for the high-voltage technology laboratory ( memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 16 kB), Wolfenbüttel University of Applied Sciences, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, 2009
