Known in the art there is the U.S. Pat. No. 6,396,172 and the PCT application published under the international publication no. WO 02/41459. In these documents, there is described a switching apparatus intended to be used with a segment of an electrical power line having several phase lines. Each of the phase lines has several conductors electrically insulated one from each other and connected in parallel. The conductors of each phase line are short-circuited together at the extremities of the segment. The apparatus comprises pairs of switches connected in parallel, for selectively opening and closing the conductors of each phase line, a detecting device for detecting current operating conditions of the segment, and a controlling device for controlling the pairs of switches according to the current operating conditions of the segment.
An object of the present invention is to provide a switching apparatus and a method that are more secure, more efficient and less expensive than what is described in the prior art.