Testing and diagnostics of medium- and high-voltage instrument transformers

Instrument transformers for medium- and high-voltage applications play a key role in energy supply. Acting as the link between the primary network and the metering or protection equipment connected to the secondary side, a safe and reliable operation without failures is essential. In relation to this background, this paper discusses testing and diagnostic methods for instrument transformers. Different application examples are presented that help to ensure an efficient production process at the manufacturing site and efficient on-site testing for site acceptance, commissioning or regular maintenance

Legal Costs as Damages in the Application of UN Sales Law

In the literature on the uniform UN sales law (CISG), the decisions in the first and second instances of the Zapata1 case triggered an extraordinarily lively discussion. Simply stated, the case concerned the delivery of painted cookie tins used for packaging Christmas cookies, for which the American buyer (i.e., place of business in the USA), citing flimsy pretexts, refused to pay. The Mexican seller (i.e., place of business in Mexico), sued and was awarded compensatory damages; as part of the damages, the trial court also awarded the plaintiff its attorneys’ fees. At the appellate level, where only the issue of attorneys’ fees was disputed, the appellate court rejected the claim for reimbursement of attorneys’ fees and reversed the trial court decision. [The seller’s] appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court by writ of certiorari was denied. The cases concerned the so-called “American rule,” according to which the parties each bear their own litigation expenses, and in particular their own attorneys’ fees, independent of the outcome of the case. This deviates from German legal understanding and has significant practical consequences. In particular, high attorneys’ fees could lead to the result that the compensatory damages awarded to the plaintiff in actuality fall far short of covering his losses, and for the victorious defendant winning a case can be a pyrrhic victory. Yet, the American rule is not without exceptions, and especially for abusive lawsuits brought on obviously groundless claims, American procedural law permits the losing party bringing such claims to be partially burdened with the cost.Also in cases of especially serious breach of contract, an award of punitive damages could make it possible for the victorious plaintiff to recover his litigation expenses and attorneys’ fees. Nevertheless, in the large majority of cases the American rule leads to the described results, which for German jurists appear at first glance surprising and unacceptable. Especially for foreign parties to a contract who come before an American court and win, the American rule can lead to unpleasant surprises

A model for predicting future EU enlargements - and why most candidate states could be waiting some time

The last state to join the European Union was Croatia in 2013, but when can current candidate states expect to secure their accession to the EU? Tina Freyburg and Tobias Böhmelt present results from a new study of the capacity of candidate states to meet accession criteria. They find that only one of the current candidate states (Macedonia) would be projected to meet the criteria by 2023, with Serbia and Turkey likely to succeed by the mid-2030s, and Albania and Bosnia-Herzegovina unlikely to meet the criteria before 2050

Codimension and pseudometric in co-Heyting algebras

In this paper we introduce a notion of dimension and codimension for every element of a distributive bounded lattice $L$. These notions prove to have a good behavior when $L$ is a co-Heyting algebra. In this case the codimension gives rise to a pseudometric on $L$ which satisfies the ultrametric triangle inequality. We prove that the Hausdorff completion of $L$ with respect to this pseudometric is precisely the projective limit of all its finite dimensional quotients. This completion has some familiar metric properties, such as the convergence of every monotonic sequence in a compact subset. It coincides with the profinite completion of $L$ if and only if it is compact or equivalently if every finite dimensional quotient of $L$ is finite. In this case we say that $L$ is precompact. If $L$ is precompact and Hausdorff, it inherits many of the remarkable properties of its completion, specially those regarding the join/meet irreducible elements. Since every finitely presented co-Heyting algebra is precompact Hausdorff, all the results we prove on the algebraic structure of the latter apply in particular to the former. As an application, we obtain the existence for every positive integers $n,d$ of a term $t_{n,d}$ such that in every co-Heyting algebra generated by an $n$-tuple $a$, $t_{n,d}(a)$ is precisely the maximal element of codimension $d$.Comment: 34 page

SUSY Parameter Measurements with Fittino

This article presents the results of a realistic global fit of the Lagrangian parameters of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model with no assumptions on the SUSY breaking mechanism using the fit program Fittino. The fit is performed using the precision of future mass measurements of superpartners at the LHC and mass and polarized topological cross-section measurements at the ILC. Higher order radiative corrections are accounted for wherever possible to date. Results are obtained for a modified SPS1a MSSM benchmark scenario (general MSSM without assumptions on the breaking mechanism) and for a specific mSUGRA scenario. Exploiting a simulated annealing algorithm, a stable result is obtained without any {\it a priori} assumptions on the fit parameters. Most of the Lagrangian parameters can be extracted at the percent level or better if theoretical uncertainties are neglected. Neither LHC nor ILC measurements alone will be sufficient to obtain a stable result.Comment: 3 pages, presented at the 2005 International Linear Collider Physics And Detector Workshop, Snowmass, CO, 14.-27. August 200

Supersymmetry Parameter Analysis with Fittino

We present the results of a realistic global fit of the Lagrangian parameters of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model to simulated data from ILC and LHC with realistic estimates of the observable uncertainties. Higher order radiative corrections are accounted for where ever possible to date. Results are obtained for a modified SPS1a MSSM benchmark scenario but they were checked not to depend critically on this assumption. Exploiting a simulated annealing algorithm, a stable result is obtained without any a priori assumptions on the fit parameters. Most of the Lagrangian parameters can be extracted at the percent level or better if theoretical uncertainties are neglected. Neither LHC nor ILC measurements alone will be sufficient to obtain a stable result. The effects of theoretical uncertainties arising from unknown higher-order corrections and parametric uncertainties are examined qualitatively. They appear to be relevant and the result motivates further precision calculations.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, presented at the Linear Collider Workshop 2005, Stanfor

Testing and diagnostics of medium- and high-voltage instrument transformers

Instrument transformers for medium- and high-voltage applications play a key role in energy supply. Acting as the link between the primary network and the metering or protection equipment connected to the secondary side, a safe and reliable operation without failures is essential. In relation to this background, this paper discusses testing and diagnostic methods for instrument transformers. Different application examples are presented that help to ensure an efficient production process at the manufacturing site and efficient on-site testing for site acceptance, commissioning or regular maintenance