Analysis of influence of a novel inductive fault current limiter on the circuit breaker in 500 kV power system

Abstract

Abstract A contribution to the engineering application of a proposed 500 kV fault current limiter (FCL) is presented. A new type of FCL composed of a highly coupled split reactor (HCSR) and fast switches is proposed. When the circuit breaker (CB) in series with the FCL in the 500 kV power system interrupts the limited fault current, the rate of rise of the recovery voltage (RRRV) reaches a value much higher than the rated value. Based on a simplified equivalent single‐phase circuit, the influence of the new FCL on the interruption procedure of the CB is simulated and discussed. The simulation results show that the high RRRV is caused by high‐frequency resonant oscillations between the HCSR and its parasite capacitance. Analysis indicates that when the reactance of the FCL is close to the short circuit reactance of the system, the RRRV will reach the highest value. To solve this issue, we proposed installing a shunt capacitor with the FCL. Simulation results showed that the RRRV under all fault modes could be restrained to below the rated value by introducing a certain shunt capacitor.

Keywords

• circuit breakers
• equivalent circuits
• fault current limiters
• power capacitors
• power system faults
• power system protection