Reliability Enhancement of Hybrid Superconducting Fault Current Limiter adopting Power Electric Device

The current limiting characteristics of hybrid SFCL with additional power electronic devices was investigated in order to improve operation reliabilities. The hybrid SFCL developed consists of a superconducting trigger (S/T) part, a fast switch (F/S) module and a current limiting (C/L) part. Although hybrid SFCL had shown a excellent current limiting characteristics, this device was rather vulnerable to the residual arc currents which could exist during fast switch operation. This undesirable arc should be extinguished as quickly as possible in order to implement perfect fault current commutation. So, in order to eliminate the residual arcs between fast switch contacts, the power electronic devices (IGBT or GTO) were connected in series between the S/T part and the interrupter of the F/S module. According to the fault tests conducting with an input voltage of and a fault current of , The power electronic devices could perfectly remove the arc generated between the contacts of the interrupter within 4 ms after the fault occurred. From the test analysis, it was confirmed that the hybrid SFCL could enhance the operation reliability by adopting additional power electronic devices.