Performance comparison between Metal Oxide Varistor and Gas Discharge Tube against transient overvoltage due to lightning strike

This project presents the comparison of the performance of transient overvoltage due to lightning strike. There were two protection devices compared in this project which is Metal Oxide Varistor (MOV) and Gas Discharge Tube (GDT). These two types of transient protector are commonly used to suppress transient in many applications such as industrial process measurement, control instrumentation, high-frequency communications and ac-medium power supply line. Their sharp breakdown characteristic enables them to provide transient suppression performance. Three models of MOV have been simulated in this project which is IEEE Group model, Picenti Giannettoni model and Fernadez Diaz model. The best among this three were compared to GDT. Where the model used to simulate the performance of GDT in this project is model proposed by Christophe Basso. The simulation has been done using the Power System Aided Design (PSCAD) software base on UiTM Shah Alam’s distribution system. Results showed that Gas Discharge Tube is better than Metal Oxide Varistor in protecting our system against lightning strike.