Assessment of MOV Deterioration under Energized Conditions

Sung-Wook Kim, Nam-Hoon Kim and Gyung-suk Kil
Additional contact information
Sung-Wook Kim: Division of Smart Electrical & Electronic Engineering, Silla University, Busan 46958, Korea
Nam-Hoon Kim: Department Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Korea Maritime and Ocean University, Busan 49112, Korea
Gyung-suk Kil: Department Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Korea Maritime and Ocean University, Busan 49112, Korea

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 15, 1-9

Abstract: Metal oxide varistors (MOVs) are widely used to protect electrical and electronic devices that are very vulnerable to surges due to the low insulation level of the equipment. MOVs deteriorate gradually due to manufacturing defects, mechanical and thermal stress, or repeated protective operations against surges. These defects result in the thermal runaway of MOV and finally lead to the explosion and electric fire of electrical and electronic devices due to a short circuit and a line-to-ground fault. Therefore, the reliable assessment of the condition of MOV deterioration is required for electrical and electronic equipment. However, when most accelerated degradation tests for the MOV have been performed to date, an 8/20 μs standard surge current is applied under de-energized conditions, which is unlike the actual operating environment. In this study, a surge generator was designed to apply a surge current to MOVs to monitor their deterioration. Three different types of leakage currents were measured to analyze the change rates of their electrical characteristics of MOVs by comparing them with the reference voltage variation. Furthermore, the condition assessment of MOV deterioration under energized and de-energized conditions was investigated.

Keywords: metal oxide varistor; deterioration; condition assessment; power semiconductor devices (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/15/4018/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/15/4018/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:13:y:2020:i:15:p:4018-:d:394209

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().