Investigation of the optimal method for improvement of the protective characteristics of gas-filled surge arresters-with/without the built-in radioactive sources

This paper presents an alternative approach aimed toward improvement of protective characteristics of gas-filled surge arresters (GFSA). Although so far GFSA with built-in radioactive sources proved to have superior protective characteristics, environmental concerns often challenge functional benefits. Experimental results show that a hollow cathode used in GFSA (no radioactive sources), offers significant improvement of protective characteristics as compared to classical designs. A number of theoretical predictions and conclusions are confirmed experimentally.