Abstract
With the diffusion of the earth leakage breakers (ELBs), its unnecessary operation (false operation) which might be caused by lightning surges has been reported. The false operation of the ELBs is a problem in the modern society and it is an important problem in view of the stable supply of the electric power.
The currently available methods of evaluating the false operation put emphasis on the peak value of applied lightning impulse voltage and does not take lightning surge current that flows through circuits into consideration. When we consider the operational mechanism of ELBs, it is required to take notice of the lightning surge current that flows circuits.
In this paper, attention was paid to the surge current that flows the ground return circuit. A 8/20μs standard impulse current waveform and a 0.5μs-100kHz ring waveform were used to make an experimental study of the evaluation of the false operation of ELBs due to lightning surges while considering the characteristics of a surge absorber element.
