Energy Coordination of Cascaded Voltage Limiting Type Surge Protective Devices

For the purpose of designing and applying optimum surge protection, one of the essential points is to take into account the energy coordination between cascaded surge protective devices(SPDs) and it is important to obtain an acceptable sharing of the energy stress between two cascaded SPDs. In this paper, in case of two voltage-limiting SPDs connected in parallel, the amount of splitting impulse current and energy that flow through each SPDs is investigated as a function of the protective distance. As a result, the energetic coordination between cascaded SPDs is strongly dependent on the voltage protection level of SPDs and the protective distance. It was confirmed that the sharing of the energy between two cascaded SPDs and the limited voltage levels are appropriate when the voltage protection levels of both upstream and downstream SPDs are the same.