Impact of Superconducting Current Limiter on the Gaseous HVDC Circuit Breakers Characteristics

Abstract

This article combines a mechanical DCCB and commutation circuit charged by resistive superconducting element to study the HVDCGCB arc interruption process during fault occurring and to investigate the transient behavior of the HVDCGCB during switching phenomena using the tools of black box arc model and EMTP-ATP simulation software. at the instant of short-circuit fault occurring, the superconducting resistance becomes a great interrupting resistance to supply the commutation capacitance by the required voltage to drive discharge current through the fault current for obtaining artificial current zero instantly. Developed model has been used for investigating the impact of uncontrolled and controlled parameters such as the factor of power cooling, the arcing time constant and the capacitance and inductance of the commutation element values on the circuit breaker arcing time in the presence of resistive SFCL and in its absence, in order to verify the differences. Results proved that the HVDCGCB with resistive (SFCL) can interrupt the fault current successfully. Arcing time of the fault interruption is reduced to several milliseconds and the interruption capability is extremely improved through commutation capacitance charging voltage and it's discharging current. From the study carried out in the article it is found that the superconducting resistance provides high discharge current leading to improve in the CB interruption process and the rise rate of the re-striking voltage between the circuit breaker contacts decreases with the use of the resistive SFCL, which reduces the likelihood of insulation failure of the circuit breakers. Moreover the impact of resistive SFCL on the HVDCGCB current, re-striking voltage and currents of resonance and absorber elements are investigated. The impact of current limiting resistor on the capacitor's charging current and voltage, is also presented in the article.