Minimizing Shock Risk during High-Voltage Measurements with Fast Fault Detection

With many experienced workers retiring, more new staff entering, and ageing infrastructure increasing operational pressure, the risk of human error and resulting injuries is growing, creating a need for safety systems that are more robust against operational mistakes.

To minimize risk of injury during high-voltage contact, any protective system must respond as quickly as possible so that the total body current remains below the ventricular fibrillation threshold defined in IEC 60479. This is particularly critical for voltages above 1 kV with high fault currents, where reaction times in the range of 1 millisecond or less are required to avoid life-threatening effects. Conventional protection methods, which depend on slower, integrated measures like RMS current, are too slow and therefore not suitable for this purpose.

The paper presents a low-resource, hardware-agnostic real-time outlier detection algorithm called ”Rapid Fault Sense” (RFS) for periodic signals that meets the stringent timing requirements of IEC 60479-2. By analysing statistical deviations between consecutive signal periods it reliably detects anomalies in electric signals while minimizing false alarms under actual test conditions. The method is computationally efficient, suitable for arbitrary waveforms, frequencies and amplitudes, and is intended as an additional safety layer to reduce injury risk alongside existing organisational and regulatory protections. It is a field-proven, patented method and the basic version is available free of charge for safety-related applications.