Transient recovery voltage

It is a critical parameter for fault interruption by a high-voltage circuit breaker, its characteristics (amplitude, rate of rise) can lead either to a successful current interruption or to a failure (called reignition or restrike).

The parameters of TRVs are defined in international standards such as IEC and IEEE (or ANSI).

Typical cases of capacitive loads are unloaded lines and capacitor banks.

As shown on Figure 5, the TRV is characterized, in its initial part, by a steep rate-of-rise due to a high-frequency oscillation produced by travelling waves that travel on the line with positive and negative reflections at the circuit breaker terminal and at the fault point, respectively.

[1] The superposition of these travelling waves gives the voltage profiles on the line shown on Figures 6 to 14 with, on the horizontal axis, the circuit breaker terminal position on the left and the short-circuit point on the right.

Figure 15 shows, as function of time, the variation of voltage on the line-side terminal of the circuit breaker.

Examples of TRV waveshapes
Figure 1 - Recovery voltage in case of a capacitive load
Figure 2 - Voltages on terminals of the first pole that clears three-phase capacitive currents in a system with isolated neutral
Figure 3 - Evolution of voltages with restrike occurring a half cycle after current interruption, in the case of single-phase capacitive current switching
Figure 4 - TRV in inductive circuit
Figure 5 - TRV in case of short-line-fault.
Figure 6 - Instant 0 (instant of current interruption)
Figure 7 - Instant T L /8
Figure 8 - Instant T L /4
Figure 9 - Instant 3T L /8
Figure 10 - Instant T L /2
Figure 11 - Instant 5T L /8
Figure 12 - Instant 3T L /4
Figure 13 - Instant 7T L /8
Figure 14 - Instant T L
Figure 15 - Time-variation of voltage on the line-side terminal of the circuit breaker
Figure 17 - TRV in out-of-phase conditions