Measuring the transient voltages, including lightning or switching impulse overvoltage, is helpful for accident analysis of power system and insulation design. In this paper, a contactless transient voltage measuring system based on a metal-free integrated electro-optic electric field sensor was proposed, implemented and tested. The lightning and switching impulse transients are proportional to the electric field they generate and vice versa, enabling measurement of the transient voltage by measuring the associated electric field. The proposed method uses an electric field sensor to directly measure the field generated by the voltage without any capacitive coupling. In addition, a method to decouple the multiphase coupling was proposed. The performances of the measuring system were tested by simulation experiments and compared with that of a standard divider. The field data of the transient overvoltage on a 220 kV bus during the process of putting a capacitor voltage transformer into operation were given. The measurement results were found to coincide with the related physical process.

Discerning weak electric fields has important implications for cosmology, quantum technology, and identifying power system failures. Photonic integration of electric field sensors is highly desired for practical considerations and offers opportunities to improve performance by enhancing microwave and lightwave interactions. Here, we demonstrate a high-Q microcavity electric field sensor (MEFS) by leveraging the silicon chip-based thin film lithium niobate photonic integrated circuits. Using the Pound-Drever-Hall detection scheme, our MEFS achieves a detection sensitivity of 5.2 μV/(m $$\sqrt{{{{{{{{\rm{Hz}}}}}}}}}$$Hz ), which surpasses previous lithium niobate electro-optical electric field sensors by nearly two orders of magnitude, and is comparable to atom-based quantum sensing approaches. Furthermore, our MEFS has a bandwidth that can be up to three orders of magnitude broader than quantum sensing approaches and measures fast electric field amplitude and phase variations in real-time. The ultra-sensitive MEFSs represent a significant step towards building electric field sensing networks and broaden the application spectrum of integrated microcavities.

Electric field distribution is critically important for quantitative insights into the physics of nonequilibrium plasma like corona. To analyze the electric field as well as the ion flow (space charge) distribution under DC corona discharges, the ion flow model has been widely adopted; Kaptzov's assumption, which states that the steady state electric field at the conductor surface remains at the corona onset value, serves as a boundary condition. In this Letter, we investigate the electric field distribution under DC corona discharges between coaxial cylindrical electrodes in ambient air by electric field induced second harmonic generation with nanosecond pulse laser beams. The electric field distribution (with or without the corona discharge) is obtained. By comparing the measurements with the results predicted by the ion flow model for the negative corona discharge, it is found that the electric field at the conductor surface is proportional to the current density of the corona discharge with a negative constant of proportionality. Therefore, for negative corona discharges, Kaptzov's assumption is valid only when the discharge current approaches zero or is small.

This article summarizes the electromagnetic time-reversal (EMTR) technique for fault location, and further numerically validates its effectiveness when the fault impedance is negligible. In addition, a specific EMTR model considering the fault impedance is derived, and the correctness of the model derivation is verified by various calculation methods. Based on this, we found that when the fault impedance is large, the existing EMTR methods might fail to accurately locate the fault. We propose an EMTR method that improves the location effect of high-impedance faults by injecting double-ended signals simultaneously. Theoretical calculations show that this method can achieve an accurate location for high-impedance faults. To further illustrate the effectiveness, the proposed method is compared with the existing EMTR methods and the most commonly used traveling wave-based method using wavelet transform. The simulation results show that the proposed double-ended EMTR method can effectively locate high-impedance faults, and it is more robust against synchronization errors compared with the traveling wave method. In addition, the proposed method does not require the knowledge or a priori guess of the unknown fault impedance.

Electric field sensors based on LiNbO₃ are attractive for use in high-intensity transient electric field measurements. However, the working bias of such sensors is easily influenced by temperature variations. Many researchers have worked to improve the thermal stability of the bias of these sensors, mostly in terms of waveguide direction selection and suppression of the pyroelectric effect. In this letter, we present an analysis of the steady-state temperature stability of an x-cut, z-propagation, straight waveguide common-path interferometer-based sensor and show that the difference between the thermo-optic coefficients of n_o and n_e caused by the anisotropy of the LiNbO₃ crystal is the main factor that affects the steady-state working bias of the electric field sensor at different working temperatures. The experimental results for the changes in the sensor bias with temperature in the steady states are in good agreement with the theoretical analysis.

In this paper, we observe the dynamic expansion process of positive leader channels under impulses with different rise times in a 1-m air gap using a Mach-Zehnder interferometry and a high-speed video camera. The thermal parameters describing the leader channel under a lightning and switching impulse are obtained through an analysis of interference fringes. The influences of different voltage waveforms on the dynamic expansion of leader channels are obtained. Firstly, the expansion rates of the channel radius are higher for shorter rise times. The average expansion rates are 72.30 ± 9.54, 28.09 ± 5.05, and 14.38 ± 3.02 m/s for the rise times of 1.2, 40, and 100 μs and the crest value of 425 kV for a 0.5-cm-diameter cone electrode; moreover, the temperatures at the centre of the leader channels are 5000–7000 K, 4000–6000 K, and 3000–4500 K, respectively. Secondly, the high-temperature region is larger for the shorter rise times. A numerical model was used to study the expansion of the leader channels, and the simulation results for the leader channel diameters showed good consistency with the experimental measurements. The continuous energy injection results in an over-pressure process in the leader channels and ultimately in their expansion. For a 1.2/50 μs waveform, the vibrational-translational relaxation (Q_VT) and the thermal dissociation (Q_D), which dominate the energy flow, are about one order of magnitude greater than that in a 100/2500 μs waveform. The convection loss and the ionization mechanism during the expansion process are also discussed.