Overvoltage Protection Using a Gas Discharge Arrester Within the MATLAB Program Tool

This paper deals with the modeling of a low-voltage gas discharge arrester using the MATLAB/Simulink program tool. The model is designed to enable a combination with other overvoltage protection system elements (metal-oxide varistor, supressor diode) in order to put a model of an integrated overvoltage protection system together. This model comprises all phases that may appear during the operation of a gas discharge arrester. Therefore, it consists of five main submodels, each of them representing one physical phenomenon. The results obtained by performing model analyses within the MATLAB/Simulink program tool were verified by laboratory tests with various voltage sources (lightning surge voltage, ac voltage, and combinations of them), performed on real gas discharge arresters.