OPTICAL HIGH VOLTAGE MEASUREMENT USING POCKELS MICROSINGLE CRYSTAL

A new optical high voltage sensor using a Pockels microsingle crystal in a longitudinal modulation arrangement is presented. A prototype of the sensor is assembled and shows an advantage of directly measuring voltage levels up to 50 kV without any potential divider in a wide frequency bandwidth of direct current to 116 MHz. In conventional Pockels sensors, acoustic resonance driven by piezoelectric effect introduces oscillatory components to signals obtained from measurements of lightning impulse voltages. In the new sensor, the measured signal is free from the oscillatory components. An accuracy of 1.9% in good agreement with predicted values is obtained from the lightning impulse voltage measurement.