  To meet their needs for testing, both of receipt and type, and in their frequently developing research activities, BALESTRO built and equipped a modern high tension laboratory that was named after the company's founder, the Engineer Gino Balestro.
The laboratory and its staff mainly specialize in tests of surge arresters, which are currently the company's main products. It is equipped with a SIEMENS impulse current generator of 1,600 kilovolts, 85 kilojoules, to produce normalized impulse current, both of switching and steep front.
Another activity in which BALESTRO has tradition is the production of special equipment for high voltage testing. The laboratory possesses test transformers to apply alternating current in nominal frequency up to 200 kilovolts, 200kVA, for reference voltage tests, partial discharges, tolerance tension and of "flashover", or any other testing that requires alternate current voltage.
The most used equipment is the current impulse generator, developed and built in BALESTRO and specially designed for surge arrester testing. It has a maximum capacity of up to 150 kilojoules and is able to produce current impulses in the various ways demanded by international technical standards. These range from alternating current impulses up to 100 kilo amperes, forming four out of ten, up to impulses of long duration of 500 amperes for two thousand microseconds. This equipment is used for the testing of residual voltage, currents of long duration, operating cycles, sustained surge versus time, and any other tests that require impulse current. The laboratory possesses other equipment to do the majority of the testing of the type requested by the surge arrester international standards, including ageing tests in varistors and other electric tests.
The only limitation of the laboratory is tests which involve high capacity in alternating current and tests in materials (aging of insulating tapes, etc).
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