Automated analysis of short circuit test parameters for circuit breaker certification

Accurate calibration of the short circuit test setup is necessary for the certification of circuit breakers. The traditional method of measuring the electrical characteristics (such as open circuit voltage, short circuit current, power factor or time constant) requires manually selecting key points from a graphical plot and calculating the relevant parameters, which is time consuming and may introduce human errors. This paper introduces the use of signal processing techniques to automate the extraction of the electrical parameters in question, for both AC and DC short circuit tests. These techniques can minimise the effects of signal noise and quantisation, resulting in improved accuracy and reliability over the traditional method.