This book provides a broad perspective of vacuum switchgear drawn from the author's many years of experience in this field. Allan Greenwood describes the development of the technology from the earliest beginnings to the most recent designs now on offer by leading companies around the world.

The book starts with a solid foundation in the physics of the vacuum arc, in vacuum breakdown and in the fundamentals of current interruptions in vacuum. For the user there is an exhaustive chapter on applications, which spans all devices from contactors through switches and reclosers to power circuit breakers. Maintenance is also addressed. There are four chapters on different aspects of design and another on testing, which should appeal to the designer. The chapter on manufacturing concentrates on the interrupter as its manufacture is so entirely different from that required for oil and gas-blast circuit breakers. The treatment is comprehensive so the book will be useful to users, designers and manufacturers alike, and to students who wish to become acquainted with the subject.

About the Author
Dr Greenwood is presently Philip Sporn Professor of Engineering at Rensselaer, the oldest engineering school in North America. His professional career, which started with a B.T.-H. apprenticeship in 1940, has been spent about equally in industry and university environments. His particular interests are in power switching equipment and the interactions of such equipment with power systems. He was one of the small team that developed the first high power vacuum interrupters for the General Electric Co. (USA) in the 1950s and has been involved with this technology ever since. He holds many patents and has published widely on this subject. He is the author of Electrical transients in power systems (John Wiley & Sons, 2nd edn, 1991). Dr Greenwood is a life Fellow of the IEEE, an Attwood Associate of CIGRE and a former Visiting Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge.


Book Information
ISBN 9780852968550
Author Allan Greenwood
Format Hardback
Page Count 292
Imprint Institution of Engineering and Technology
Publisher Institution of Engineering and Technology