Stress the Insulation. Prove It Holds.

A transformer, a switchgear panel or a cable is only as good as the insulation that keeps its high voltage where it belongs. Before it's ever energised for real, that insulation gets deliberately stressed — above its rated voltage, and with a simulated lightning strike — and watched to see whether it holds, and whether it's free of the small internal discharges that predict eventual failure. Neometrix's high-voltage test bench proves exactly that: AC and DC withstand, lightning impulse and partial discharge testing on transformers, switchgear, insulators, bushings and cables, to IEC 60060 and IEC 60270, representative up to roughly 800 kV with impulse into the MV range.

High-Voltage Testing Is a Safety Discipline First

The hard, defining engineering here isn't the voltage source — it's applying and removing a lethal voltage safely. That means an earthed test cage, door interlocks, automatic earthing and discharge sticks, air clearances and screening, all built around the source rather than added afterward. Everything else on the bench exists inside that safety envelope.

Measuring at High Voltage Is the Other Hard Half

You have to read kilovolts up to megavolts with a calibrated voltage divider, and you have to catch partial discharge in picocoulombs — a vanishingly small signal — against real-world electrical noise. That means the measurement chain and the screening around it are engineered as carefully as the voltage source itself; a discharge measurement swamped by ambient noise is worse than no measurement at all, because it can pass a defective transformer.

Two Numbers Decide It

Did the insulation withstand the applied AC, DC and impulse voltage without breaking down — and how much partial discharge and dielectric loss does it show under stress? The first is a pass/fail result. The second is the early warning: a transformer that passes withstand testing today but shows elevated partial discharge is telling you something about its remaining service life before it ever fails outright.

One More Lab, One More Discipline

A high-voltage lab sits in the same test-laboratory family as Neometrix's EMI/EMC laboratory and its EV, e-motor and charger test systems — the underlying competence to lay out, safety-engineer, instrument and commission a test facility, applied here specifically to high voltage.

Where the Engineering Actually Is

It's worth being direct about this: the transformer or switchgear panel under test isn't the hard part, and neither, really, is the voltage source itself. The lethal-voltage safety envelope — the earthed cage, interlocks, earthing sticks, clearances — and the measurement of kilovolts and picocoulombs against ambient noise are what actually make a high-voltage lab trustworthy.

We Integrate; the Sources Are Specialist

The HV test transformer, impulse generator, partial-discharge detector and voltage dividers are bought-in specialist equipment from established manufacturers. Neometrix engineers the lab around them: layout, safety, earthing, screening, controls and measurement integration. No specific delivered laboratory is claimed on this page — this describes a reference configuration engineered to order.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is safety described as the "hard part" of high-voltage testing rather than the voltage itself?
Because generating high voltage is, relatively speaking, a solved engineering problem using bought-in transformers, impulse generators and dividers. What's genuinely difficult — and what actually determines whether a lab is trustworthy — is applying and removing a lethal voltage to a test object safely, over and over, without incident. That requires an earthed test cage, interlocked doors that cannot be opened while voltage is live, automatic earthing and discharge sticks to guarantee a test object is truly de-energised, and carefully engineered clearances and screening. Get the source right but the safety envelope wrong, and you don't have a usable lab.

What does partial discharge measurement tell you that a simple pass/fail withstand test doesn't?
A withstand test tells you whether insulation breaks down at a given voltage right now — a binary pass or fail. Partial discharge measurement, read in picocoulombs, detects small internal electrical discharges happening inside the insulation that don't cause immediate failure but are a leading indicator of degradation. Equipment can pass a withstand test today while still showing partial discharge levels that predict it will fail earlier in service than equipment with a cleaner signature. That's why serious high-voltage test programmes measure both: withstand for today's pass/fail, and partial discharge for the early warning.