The use of capacitive dividers (CDs) in medium-voltage (MV) networks started as simple voltage detectors and as rough voltage measurement instruments for protective purposes. Now, with the spread of intelligent electronic devices and renewable energy sources at the distribution level, capacitive dividers are designed and installed to perform accurate voltage measurements. Such a requirement is mandatory when the power quality has to be assessed. Therefore, CDs are currently being used either for power frequency or for high-frequency (supraharmonic- or partial-discharge-level) measurements. In this paper, typical off-the-shelf CDs are studied and modeled to understand how they behave in a wide range of frequencies and when the temperature varies. To this purpose, specific setups and tests have been developed and performed. From the results, it is clear that with proper modeling of CDs, it is possible to exploit them for measuring phenomena in a wide range of frequencies, including the effects due to temperature variations and self-resonances.
Keywords: capacitive divider; capacitor; frequency; modeling; partial discharges; procedure; setup; supraharmonics; temperature; voltage divider.