ITEE Innovation Expo 2008 : Project Details

Design and testing of an electromechanical multipulse lightning impulse current generator

Abstract Insulation test for any high voltage device is important to verify its reliability and stability under harsh condition that is created by lightning and switching surge. A lightning ground flash is often characterised by multiple stroke. In order to perform the test on the device, a system that capable to simulating the multipulse lightning characteristics must be used so that the results that obtained is as almost as the same with the results that perform under the real lightning stroke.

Back to 1990, the multipulse lightning impulse current generator were first assembled is using gravity to drive the pendulum arm as the switching module and its size was huge because of the old designed power supplying circuit. Other than that, the time precision, speed controlling and also reproducibility of every cycle of the testing on using the system could be said is worse and unpredictable. This had made the thinking of creating a system that is more reliable and controllable.

The aim of this thesis is to design and testing the electromechanical multipulse lightning impulse current generator that using a highly integrated digital controller dc brushed motor as the switching module to overcome the time constrain and also the size constrain of the older version. A simple graphical user interface (GUI) were created as the communicating device to control the velocity of the motor in any laboratory computer in order to archived the purpose of performing long distance remote controlling by using Ethernet to Controller-area-network (CAN-bus).