A closed and open contact method to predict a usable life of vacuum interrupters in the field can include using computer instructions in the data storage to instruct the processor to position a calculated amp or calculated pressure on an ionic or current versus pressure calibration curve for the installed vacuum interrupter and identify trend data from a library of trend data corresponding to the installed vacuum interrupter and to the calculated pressure or calculated amp of the installed vacuum interrupter; thereby determining the anticipated life expectancy.