The inception of leader discharges in long air gaps at atmospheric pressure is simulated with a thermo-hydrodynamic model and a detailed kinetic scheme for N ₂ /O ₂ /H ₂ O mixtures. In order to investigate the effect of humidity, the kinetic scheme includes the most important reactions with the H ₂ O molecule and its derivatives, resulting in a scheme with 45 species and 192 chemical reactions. The heating of a thin plasma channel in front of an anode electrode during the streamer to leader transition is evaluated with a detailed 1D radial model. The analysis includes the simulation of the corresponding streamer bursts, dark periods and aborted leaders that may occur prior to the inception of a propagating leader discharge. The simulations are performed using the time-varying discharge current in two laboratory discharge events of positive polarity reported in the literature as input. Excellent agreement between the simulated and the experimental time variation of the thermal radius for a 1 m rod-plate air gap discharge event reported in the literature has been found. The role of different energy transfer and loss mechanisms prior to the inception of a stable leader is also discussed. It is found that although a small percentage of water molecules can accelerate the vibrational-translational relaxation to some extent, this effect leads to a negligible temperature increase during the streamer-to-leader transition. It is also found that the gas temperature should significantly exceed 2000 K for the transition to lead to the inception of a propagating leader. Otherwise, the strong convection loss produced by the gas expansion during the transition causes a drop in the translational temperature below 2000 K, aborting the incepted leader. Furthermore, it is shown that the assumptions used by the widely-used model of Gallimberti do not hold when evaluating the streamer-to-leader transition.

A 2D numerical simulation of the transition from stable positive glow corona to streamers in coaxial cylindrical configuration is presented. The hydrodynamic model with several convection-dominated continuity equations together with Poisson equation are solved with consideration of the ionization layer. The transition from a stable positive glow corona produced under a DC voltage to streamers is investigated under a sudden change of the applied voltage. The critical rate of rise of voltage required for the transition from positive glow to streamer corona is evaluated with a voltage ramp. By introducing either physical or numerical instabilities into the model, streamers with filamentary structures are observed, which produce a sudden increase of the discharge current by more than two orders of magnitude. It is also found that the surface electric field of the corona-generating conductor deviates from the onset electric field, casting doubts about the validity of Kaptzov’s approximation to evaluate the transition from stable glow to streamers.

The amount of the electric charge injected by the streamer corona bursts during the stage of leader inception determines the energy deposited to thermalize the corona stem into a leader segment. This paper is aimed at investigating the critical charge required for positive leader inception in air by using a thermo-hydrodynamic model with a detailed kinetic scheme. In order to simplify the analysis and to speed up the simulation, a reduced kinetic scheme for air is proposed. Numerical comparisons show that the reduced scheme can obtain almost the same results as the previous comprehensive kinetic scheme but with only half of the number of species and reactions. The thermo-hydrodynamic model with the reduced kinetics is then used to solve the radial dynamics of a single stem heated by current pulses typical of streamer corona bursts. The critical charge necessary for the direct transition of a first streamer corona into a leader under electrodes with large curvature radius is estimated between 0.08 and 0.5 µ C per stem. Furthermore, the simulation shows that the gas heating of corona stem formed from electrodes with small curvature radius is mainly determined by the total accumulated charge injected by previous streamer corona bursts and the length of the dark periods in between the current pulses. The shape and the number of the corona current pulses in the discharge also play a role and their effects are discussed. It is suggested that the transition into a leader is triggered when a secondary streamer burst is initiated after the gas temperature is increased by the heating of previous streamers to about 1200 K. In addition, it is found that the heating produced by the charge injected by previous streamer corona bursts can be neglected if the dark period to the next burst is larger than few hundreds of µ s for a corona stem with moderate initial stem radius. This indicates that the critical charge criterion obtained from laboratory experiments does not hold to evaluate the inception of positive leaders under conditions when long dark periods are present.

The insulation system in a transformer degrades over time and it needs periodic monitoring for uninterrupted operation of the power system network. Moisture content (MC), acid number, and dissolved gases are the important parameters that establish the aging and degradation status of the transformer liquid insulation. This work focuses on using high-frequency signals nonintrusively for estimating the degradation of the transformer liquid insulation by considering the MC and acid content. A novel nonintrusive and nondestructive testing method using an ${S}$ -band pyramidal horn antenna is introduced in this work to estimate the degradation of the liquid insulation with respect to aging duration. The scattering parameter ${S}_{{11}}$ of the liquid insulation is first characterized and measured in an anechoic chamber to avoid electromagnetic interference (EMI). These tests are performed initially on laboratory-aged mineral oil (MO) samples and a prediction curve of $\vert {S}_{{11}}\vert $ as a function of moisture and acid number is obtained. $\vert {S}_{{11}}\vert $ of the in-service transformer oil samples is then compared with the prediction curve and the degradation status is predicted. It is found that the chosen frequency band is able to differentiate the aging status of MO accurately. This technique can be used for establishing the degradation status of any type of liquid insulation. A miniature version of the proposed technique can be used for portable and faster condition assessment of insulating oils.

The elongation and branching of long positive spark discharges in the laboratory and in lightning have been attributed to the formation of thermalized channels inside a diffuse, glow-like streamer section at the leader head. It is experimentally shown here that the structured morphology of streamers produce low-density stem channels that elongate and branch well before a new leader channel section is formed. These non-thermalized stems are also shown to develop ahead of a developing leader channel. These findings are based on high-speed photography and Schlieren imaging used to visualize both the morphology of streamer filaments and stem channels. Numerical analysis is also performed to estimate the axial temperature and density of the stem channels. A stem-driven mechanism for the propagation and branching of positive long air gap discharges is proposed and discussed based on the presence of not-yet thermalized, low density channels formed by streamer ensembles at the leader head.

Direct current circuit breakers (DCCBs) have become a large research topic and are considered one of the critical components for future DC grids. Proposed DCCB concepts may be grouped into hybrid DCCBs and active resonant DCCBs. In this work, the enhanced active resonant (EAR) DCCB family is introduced. EAR DCCBs combine elements of hybrid and active resonant DCCBs. The EAR DCCB family consists of one unidirectional and six bidirectional concepts. All concepts feature proactive commutation. The main characteristic of the EAR DCCBs is that discharge closing switches are used instead of semiconductors with turn-off capability. Relevant discharge closing switch technology is reviewed, a laboratory prototype is explained, and experimental results are presented to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed DCCB concepts.