MV-capacitive electronic voltage detectors: conclusions from comprehensive type tests based on the new IEC-draft

In many MV substations, the safety of operation relies on the use of voltage detectors in order to verify that the circuits are effectively unenergized before to connect them to earth. Electronic capacitive voltage detectors have become more and more widespread. Up to now they were only covered by very different national standards mainly in France and Germany. This lead to the development of two strongly different detector types. Recently WG 7 of IEC committee 78 worked out a draft covering all capacitive voltage detectors above 1 kV. Here, the authors describe how they undertook a comparative study on a large variety of equipment of voltages from 6.6-15 kV and 36 kV. The IEC document was the basis of the test program