60th anniversary of the High Voltage Laboratory

When academician Prof. Dr. Milan Vidmar founded the Electric Power Research Institute in 1948, he especially emphasised the importance of the High Voltage Laboratory. He explained that computation tools are the basic tools in developing high voltage devices, but every theoretical solution must also be verified in practice, which has been realised by the laboratory so far. Strong computer-based computation methods are replacing tests, but they will never be able to substitute them entirely. In 1962, the building at Jamova 20 in Ljubljana enabled the start of operations of the high voltage laboratory. In the first period of its operations, the laboratory provided support to the domestic electric power sector and high voltage equipment industry, and it often carried out equipment tests to prove conformity with certain standards. Subsequently, the laboratory focused on diagnostic equipment testing for maintenance needs and finally for the needs of assessing the equipment’s life span. The High Voltage Laboratory at the Milan Vidmar Electric Power Research Institute now has many sources of high direct, alternate and impulse voltage, impulse current sources and modern high voltage measurement and diagnostic equipment. The capacity of resources enables the implementation of standard dielectric tests of all high voltage levels.