EQUIPMENT

The main test area of the High Voltage Laboratory (6.50 m high, 12 m long and 7 m wide), being enclosed in a Faraday cage and with its floor covered by a plane earth conductor, provides reliable earth connections and effective shielding against electromagnetic interference. Two control desks can be used simultaneously for composite high voltage and impulse current tests.

For the generation and measurement of high voltages and high currents the following equipment is available:

  • 10-stage Marx generator, 1 MV/7 kJ.
  • Three test transformers 2×220 V/100 kV/220 V, 5 kVA connectable in cascade arrangement.
  • Three Glassman regulated HVDC power supplies, 125 kV/4 kW and 30 kV/120 W.
  • A system of high-voltage construction elements allowing setting up of several circuits for high voltage experiments, such as a 4-stage Marx generator 540 kV/1 kWs, a 3-stage Cockroft-Walton multiplier 420 kV/1.1 kWs and a capacitive divider 540 kV, 300 pF.
  • Impulse current generators 80 kA, 8/20 μs and 10 kA, 10/350 μs.
  • Mobile impulse current generator 5 kA, 8/20 μs.
  • Hilo combination wave generator PG 12-804, 12 kV – 1.2/50 μs, 6 kA – 8/20 μs.
  • Long duration Impulse current Generator 500A, 2ms.

Many instruments and devices for measurements and testing are also available, such as:

  • Capacitive dividers 1 MV, 200 pF and 500 kV, 500 pF.
  • Sphere gaps with sphere diameter up to 75 cm.
  • PD detector 9132R Tettex Instruments combined with standard capacitors 25 kV/1 nF or 100 kV/1 nF.
  • Standard SF6 capacitor 38 pF, 140 kV.
  • Pressure chamber 0-6 bar, 140 kV.
  • UV camera UVSee TD100.
  • IR camera OPTRIS PI450i.
  • Electrostatic Voltmeter TREK 341B.
  • Megger earth testers.
  • Impulse current generators 80 kA, 8/20 μs and 10 kA, 10/350 μs.
  • Digital storage oscilloscopes, up to 600 MHz bandwidth.
  • Data acquisition system (NI DAC 9184-NI 9221- NI 9402).
  • Number of high voltage probes and current transformers.
  • Optical fiber systems.
  • Photomultipliers Thorn EMI 9781R.
  • 1653B FLUKE Multifunction Installation Tester.
  • Chamber shielded against electromagnetic radiation.
  • 10t rail mounted crane.

Complementary to the traditional high voltage equipment, an extensive range of software is used including ATP-EMTP, Comsol Multiphysics, CYMGRD, MATLAB, and XGSLab. Lab personnel has full access to the High-Performance Computing (HPC) infrastructure of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Finally, several windows application software packages have been developed, most of them are outcome of Diploma Theses, available for download.