Evaluation of surge arrester models for overvoltage studies

This work aims to determine a model which represents efficiently real surge arresters behaviour, when submitted to fast surge current impulses and lightning current impulses. It presented a comparative study among nine arrester models. The experimental data of a zinc-oxide (ZnO) block with rated voltage of 4 kV was used in comparisons. Each model response was compared with experimental data in order to specify which model produces better results. This comparison was performed in relation of voltage peak, absorbed energy and coefficient of determination (R²), which was used to compare the voltage waveform similarity between experimental and simulation results. Thus, representation efficiency of each model was verified. The impulsive currents waveforms applied to arrester blocks were 2/6 μs, 4/10 μs and a standard lightning current impulse of 8/20 μs.