Specific Considerations on IEC Standardization of Externally Gapped Line Surge Arresters (EGLAs)

The application of externally gapped line surge arresters (EGLAs), which have been developed and established in Japan, is now expanding into many countries. Therefore, the maintenance team 4 (MT4) in the international electrotechnical commission (IEC) technical committee 37 (TC37) for surge arresters advances the standardization works to specify the minimum criteria for requirements and testing methods of EGLAs. EGLAs are effective lightning protection of overhead transmission lines, and have unique required performances originated from the external series gap. The unique required performances of EGLA are insulation coordination performance of EGLA sparkover voltage for lightning overvoltage with the insulator assembly to be protected, withstand voltage performance for switching surge overvoltage and TOV, and follow current interruption performance. This paper discusses the specific issues to be considered for the standardization, such as classification of lightning discharge current rating and a test procedure for follow current interruption performance, based on the Japanese technology through more than twenty years of experience with a large numbers of EGLAs in 22kV to 500kV systems.