The Zinc Oxide lightning arrester (hereinafter referred to as ZnO) has two structural ways: one is a no gap ZnO lightning arrester, the other is a ZnO arrester with a gap.

It is with Zinc Oxide new valve instead of the original Zinc Oxide silicon carbide valve, the valve plate has excellent non-linear character (a=0.04~0.05), its I-V curve is very flat in the system under normal operating voltage, electric current flows through the ZnO valve to a few tens of microamperes, so Zinc Oxide arrester early the response is fast, the energy absorption overvoltage, residual pressure is small, so from overvoltage damage to electrical equipment, has excellent protective performance. Specially adapted to vacuum interrupter, which has excellent arc extinguishing performance, which absorbs overvoltage in operation, and is small and light in weight, so it is very popular with vacuum circuit breaker production units.

But this Zinc Oxide arrester used in electric power system, really experienced a very difficult process. Due to manufacturing quality problems, material selection and formulation of the irrational structure, the problem, in the neutral point ungrounded system used in Zinc Oxide arrester, often in the operation of burned out and used in the system, often in the operation of burn and explosion accident caused by the time in the system, causing the people of all sorts of concerns using Zinc Oxide arrester.