Control method of an arc suppression device based on single-phase inverter

Abstract

Most renewable energy distribution systems operate with neutral point ineffectively earthed. Traditional arc fault suppression devices, such as Petersen Coil, compensate the single-phase grounding fault caused capacitive current with zero sequence inductive current. They cannot compensate the active and harmonic currents, thus have limited arc suppression performance for single-phase grounding faults. To solve these problems, an arc suppression device based on single-phase inverter is presented in this paper. When single-phase grounding faults occur, the device injects active, reactive and harmonic currents to the neutral point to force the faulted phase voltage to zero, the faulted current will be limited to zero and the fault arcs can thus be reliably extinguished. The proposed voltage control method uses the zero sequence voltage and faulted phase voltage as reference to generate the injection currents. It is not needed to measure the capacitive and fault residual currents of the distribution system, which are difficult to implement. The simulation results validate the effectiveness of theoretical analysis.