Design and test of a multi capacity integrated HTS thin film reconfigurable current limiter

Abstract

This paper proposes and tests the YBa2Cu3O7-x (YBCO) thin film based multi capacity integrated high temperature superconducting thin film reconfigurable current limiter (HTS-TFRCL). Generally, reconfigurable concepts are widely employed in the microwave communication and antenna fields to design and fabricate the device with multiple operation performance, by choosing different circuit structures. Thus reconfigurable concept can be employed in the design of HTS thin film current limiter integrated different limiting capacity in one thin film device against the different levels of fault current. Considering there is few relevant work focused on the application of reconfigurable concept design in HTS current limiting field, the YBCO thin film based HTS-TFRCL is proposed and tested for the first time in this paper. It can be found from preliminary verification experiment carried out in our laboratory that, the proposed HTS-TFRCL has the multi current limiting capacity (its current limiting capacities are 50 VA, 90 VA, 120 VA, and 170 VA at 65 VAC, respectively), it can operate as expected to limit the fault currents under different voltages. Therefore, the HTS-TFRCL proposed in this paper can offer the multiple current limiting modes and capacities to limit the different levels of fault current, according to the practical operation requirements, the compactness, fabricating cost, stability and reliability of the current protection system can be further improved.