Development and Traceability Method of a 100 kA Reference Impulse Current Measuring System

In order to improve the measurement accuracy of high impulse current, this paper presents the system composition, performance improvement and, traceability method of a 100 kA impulse current measuring system. Since the scale factor of the measuring system can be determined by the product of the scale factor of the components such as the shunt and the digital recorder, a method of component quantity traceability is proposed. Based on a shunt with rated current of 100 kA, a stable measuring system is developed. In addition, a reference impulse current calibrator and a step current generator for traceability are developed, so that the impulse scale factor of the shunt considering skin effect can be accurately calibrated. A single influence quantity independent quantification method was proposed. The influence of measurement error of 100 kA impulse current measuring system is analyzed quantitatively. Based on the high current test results and theoretical analysis, the measurement uncertainty components of peak current and time parameters are evaluated. The expanded uncertainty of the scale factor and time parameters were 0.4% ( k = 2) and 0.8% ( k = 2) respectively. Evaluation results demonstrate that the developed measuring system can accurately reproduce and measure the high exponential lightning impulse current.