High Voltage, Lec.

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Dr. Jehan Shazly

High Voltage

Introduction
High voltage:
 natural lightning discharge
 man made H.V. are used for
1- Transmission of large bulks of power over long distances.
2- Medical (x-rays) and industrial application.
3- Research laboratories.

1- Generation of H.V
Different forms of H.V.
a) high D.C voltage
b) high A.C voltage
c) high transient or impulse voltage due to lightning or switching.

a) Generation of H.D.C.V.
- HDCV is defined by IEC standards as being greater than 1200 V DC. (1.2 KV DC)
- HVDC is needed in insulation tests on cables and capacitors.
- Rectifiers are used for producing high D.C voltage from A.C sources.
1- Half wave rectifier.
2- Full wave rectifier
3- Voltage doubler type rectifier.

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 High Voltage, Lec. 1
Dr. Jehan Shazly

a-1) Half wave rectifier

- In the +ve half cycle of the half wave rectifier the capacitor C is charged to Vm of the
secondary of high voltage transformer.
- In the -ve half cycle C is discharge in the load RL.

- Fluctuation is in the o/p d.c voltage  v appears, is called a ripple voltage

- Filters are used to smoothen the ripple (reduce ripple).

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 High Voltage, Lec. 1
Dr. Jehan Shazly

a-2) Full wave rectifier

- In the +ve half cycle the rectifier D1 conducts and charge C.

- In the –ve half cycle the rectifier D2 conducts and charge C.

- The ripple voltage  v is smaller for full wave rectifier than that for half wave rectifier.

a-3) voltage doubler circuits:

- Both full wave and half wave rectifiers produce a d.c voltage less than a.c maximum
voltage Vm.
- When higher d.c voltages are needed, voltage doubler rectifiers are used.

Simple voltage doubler

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 High Voltage, Lec. 1
Dr. Jehan Shazly

- During -ve half cycle, C1 is charged through D1 to a voltage of (+ Vmax)

- During +ve half cycle C1 rises to voltage of (+ 2 Vmax).
- C2 in turn is charged through D2 to (+ 2 Vmax).

- d.c. o/p voltage will be less than 2Vmax.

Cockcroft – Walton voltage multiplier circuits consist of several stages of simple

voltage doubler circuits.
- The circuit is repeated by cascade connections.
C2n charges to Vo = 2 n V even number 2, 4, 6, 8, …….

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 High Voltage, Lec. 1
Dr. Jehan Shazly

b) Generation of high alternating voltage:

- HVAC is defined by IEC standards as being greater than 1000 V a.c. (1 kV a.c.).
- For generating a.c. test voltages of less than a few hundred kV, a single transformer
can be used.
- For higher voltages, a single unit becomes difficult and costly due to insulation
problem, transportation, and erection of large transformers.
- The drawbacks are overcome by series or cascading connections of several identical
units of transformer.

Cascaded transformer:

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 High Voltage, Lec. 1
Dr. Jehan Shazly

1- If the O/P voltage of the first stage is V, the full O/P voltage of its multiple
according to the number of stages Vo = n V
2- A disadvantage of this arrangement is that harmonics can appear in test voltages.
3- Using resonant circuit is more economical to get rid of these harmonics.
a) Parallel resonance: by addition of parallel reactors in the primary L.V or the
secondary H.V to neutralize the capacitive load current, thus improving
power factor (P.F).
b) Series resonance: using a series reactor.

c) Generation of impulse voltages

Standardized impulse wave is represented by the general equation.
Vo / p  V \ (e t  e  t )
α, β : control the front and the tail time.

Circuits for producing the impulse waves:

Impulse waves may be produced with a combination of R-L-C circuits as show in the
following figures:

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 High Voltage, Lec. 1
Dr. Jehan Shazly

Fig(a)

Fig(b)

Fig(c)
A capacitor C is charged to a d.C voltage. By closing the switch C is suddenly discharged
into (LR, R1R2 C2………..). The discharge voltage Vo(t) gives the double exponential
wave form.

Analysis impulse generator circuit of series RLC in fig (a)using Laplace transform:

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 High Voltage, Lec. 1
Dr. Jehan Shazly

V
S V V
I ( s)   
1 1 R 1
 SL  R S 2 L  R  L( S 2  S  )
SC C L LC
R V
VO / P  I (S )  R 
L (S 2  S  1 )
R
L LC

 B  B 2  4 AC
S1 and S2 =
2A
2
R R 4
    
L  L  LC
S1 and S2 
2

2 2
R R 4 R R 4
         
L  L  LC L  L  LC
S1   ,S2  
2 2

VO / P (t ) 
VR  K1

K2 
L  S   S   
 
VR
2
e t
 e  t  k2 = -k1
R 1
2L 2

4 L LC

Vo / p (t )  V \ (e t  e  t ) Impulse wave equation.