A Compound Current Limiter and Circuit Breaker

Abstract

The protection of sensitive loads against voltage drop is a concern for the power system. A fast fault current limiter and circuit breaker can be a solution for rapid voltage recovery of sensitive loads. This paper proposes a compound type of current limiter and circuit breaker (CLCB) which can limit fault current and fast break to adjust voltage sags at the protected buses. In addition, it can act as a circuit breaker to open the faulty line. The proposed CLCB is based on a series L-C resonance, which contains a resonant transformer and a series capacitor bank. Moreover, the CLCB includes two anti-parallel power electronic switches (a diode and an IGBT) connected in series with bus couplers. In order to perform an analysis of CLCB performance, the proposed structure was simulated using MATLAB. In addition, an experimental prototype was built, tested, and the experimental results were reported. Comparisons show that experimental results were in fair agreement with the simulation results and confirm CLCB’s ability to act as a fault current limiter and a circuit breaker.

Parallel resonance type fault current limiting circuit breaker

“…Fault current limiters (FCLs) can act as a protective means to decrease the fault current in the electrical networks [3][4][5][6]. These devices can decrease the fault current successfully [7][8][9]. The conventional CBs have a considerable delay which causes voltage sag during the operation.…”

Bridge‐type fault current limiter and hybrid breaker for HVDC grids applications

“…On the other hand, the fault current limiters are types of protection devices, which are lately used to improve HVDC protection capability [13]. In [14,15] inductive fault control limiters (FCLs) are proposed to protect the grid from high raising time of fault current. A superconductive technology-based FCL is studied to improve hybrid HVDC breaker in [16,17].…”

Distribution system protection by coordinated fault current limiters

“…The FCL is a feasible solution to address the mismatching overcurrent protection system problem between microgrid and distributed generators [24]. Recently, a compound type of reactor-based FCL with the capability of fast circuit breaking is presented in [25,26]. IoT as a data transferring system has been proposed to increase FCLs reliability [27][28][29].…”