Welcome Message from ISC Chairman

Future prospects of International Conference on Electric Power Equipment –Switching Technology

Thanks to your great contributions to the past four meetings of ICEPE-ST since 2011, this conference has grown up one of the largest and most distinguished international conferences, and the importance of this conference has been recognized much more by the engineers in the technological field.
Adding to the conventional research ones, the number of researching subjects have been increasing recently. For example, in order to replace SF₆ gas circuit breakers to the new ones, the developments for the substitute gasses were being conducted, and new gasses have been demonstrated. I personally feel some anxiety about the usage of the new gasses. The control of the gasses might be a troublesome task for the production lines in case of plural gas mixture, and decomposition products of the new gasses after a high current interruption might have some influences to the environment if it is released to the outside of the breakers. Aiming to cope these obstacles of the substitute gasses, high voltage vacuum circuit breaker (VCB) development are being promoted such as one break VCB with 145 kV or above. It needs further consideration to clarify the voltage level of VCB to be realized in the future.
Semiconductor device application have been limited in ac low voltage applications so far, but recently application to the dc circuit breaker is also expected. In the HV-DC power system with multi terminal configuration, a very quick interruption is needed such as less than 10 ms interruption after the fault detection, and moreover, 300 kV and 20 kA ratings will be requested to the circuit breakers in the HV-DC system. I believe the HV-DCCB with a combination of the semiconductor devices and current limiting equipment might be promising measures to the future power systems.

It is worthy of mention that these requirements are coming not only from Europe nor US but mainly from Asian countries, and I truly want to promote the research and development based on these situations from now on. I believe that, in the near future, many valuable research themes are waiting for us in the switching technology, and I sincerely want to encourage young engineers to participate in the research and development groups especially in Asian countries.

Sincerely yours,

ICEPE-ST Chairman
Professor Satoru Yanabu