A System for Dynamic Contact Resistance with Arduino Platform on MV and HV Circuit Breaker

The paper describes the use of Arduino platform in developing a solution for measuring and processing the dynamic contact resistance curve in high voltage circuit breakers (CB). The system is capable of supply a current test of 300 A between the breaker contacts. The current signal circuit is achieved by the combination of a voltage source based on a stationary battery 12 V / 220 Ah and current limiting resistor from 0.4 to 1.2 Omega. The dynamic resistance measurement (DRM) signals are acquired by an auxiliary circuit which communicates with two analog channels Arduino platform. The voltage and current signals are acquired and stored on the Arduino microcontroller and in the sequence are sent to personal computer to be evaluated by a Matlab(C) based routine used for digital filtering of noise and generate the dynamic contact resistance curve. The Arduino platform used in this research was the Arduino Mega, with 6 analog input pin, with a 16 bits A/D converter.