Development of a vacuum circuit breaker with breaking and switching capability

Nowadays vacuum circuit breaker(VCB) is widely used in medium voltage networks. Back-to-back capacitive bank switching is the most severe duty among capacitive current switching duties because the amplitude of the inrush current is very large. In this paper, a unique VCB prototype was investigated. This VCB has ability of back to back capacitor bank switching as well as breaking short circuit current. There are not many multi-function VCBs which have the ability of back to back switching like this. Through the tests, this VCB finally won the certificate of C2 and E2 class according to IEC standards 62271-100.