5. Switching on and off AC circuits

5.1 General

The basic concepts of cut types are presented in the article Medium-voltage breaking techniques. We will limit ourselves here to presenting the switching characteristics specified only for high voltage, and to giving, for other switching (normal load currents, terminal faults), additional information specific to high voltage.

As seen in the fascicule , establishing a current poses different problems depending on whether it is a question of switching on a capacitor bank (§ 3.1.3.2) or establishing a short-circuit current (§ 3.6 and § 3.9).

Numerous phenomena can lead to the failure of an attempted cut. These include

• dielectric restrike between...