Reducing SF6 Emission from HV Circuit Breakers - A Life Cycle Approach

Environmental pressures from governments, investors, customers, suppliers, and communities have raised environmental awareness of electrical utilities in responsible management of SF6 circuit breakers. A life cycle approach assists electric utilities to better understand their current environmental foot print, which eventually influence their decisions on capital investment, such as asset renewal, utilizing new emission control technologies, improvement of current or proposed capital expenditures, and direction of environmental activities. This paper explains a number of key areas that electric utilities should investigate to find out potential opportunities to reduce or prevent SF6 emission from HV CBs.