Recent development of alternative gases to SF6 for switching applications

CIGRE Study Committee A3 held a Workshop on SF6 alternatives jointly with Current Zero Club (CZC) on Monday, 22 August 2016 during the 2016 Paris session. Sixty experts attended. The purpose of the Workshop was to collect the available information on interrupting and switching performance with state-of-the-art of alternatives to SF6 and then to evaluate their interrupting capabilities in comparison with SF6 in order to decide whether any new actions are required in CIGRE, besides the recently published SF6 paper in 2014 [1]. After opening remarks by the chairs of SC A3 and CZC, the results of the latest investigation conducted by the CZC members were presented. Five manufacturers then presented developments and on-going pilot projects with SF6 alternatives. The amount of information…