I have a question about varistors. Actually two.
Question 1.
Are varistors the sort of devices that cannot be expected to conduct many pulses of electricity?
Or can I expect a varistor to happily conduct many short pulses of extremely short duration, into a resistor so that energy dissipates in a resistor and not in a varistor?
In other words, are they more like one shot devices, wearing out with every breakdown, or can they be expected to conduct a tiny amount of electricity 1000 times per second?
I realize that I cannot exceeed the power limit that the varistor is rated for, for any duration like seconds or minutes. But what about very many pulses that, cumulatively, are below the varistor's rated power on the per minute basis.
Question 2. Once a breakdown voltage of a varistor is exceeded, and it starts conducting, when would it return to a non-conductive state? When current falls below some threshold? Or when?
i