Residual Electrical Life Assessment Method for Circuit Breakers Serving for AC Filters Based on Cumulative Arcing charge

The circuit breaker for AC filters (ACF) is a key power equipment that is used to control and protect the energization and de-energization of ACF. The objective of this paper is to present a residual electrical life assessment method for circuit creakers serving for ACF based on cumulative arcing charge. The proposed method can be devided into 3 steps. The first step is to calculate the cumulative arcing charge in all the operations of the circuit breaker in service. The second step is to apply capacitive switching tests in labatory as accelerated aging experiments to the same circuit breaker until a restrike appears and then calculate the cumulative arcing charge in this experimental process. The final step is to evaluate the residual electrical life of the circuit breaker based on a ratio of the cumulative arcing charges calcultated in previous two steps. To make further understanding of the method, an application example of a circuit breaker serving under system voltage of 550 kV is presented.