Reduction of Short Circuit Current Fault on Photovoltaic and Wind Power Plant as Distributed Generation Using SFCL

Abstract

The reliability of the electric power system is very important to be improved. Reliability is the system’s ability return to normal condition after disturbance. The types of disturbance are harmonic, frequency and voltage stability, short circuit, etc. However, short circuit disturbance is most common in electric power systems. This article discusses the reduction of short circuit current faults in renewable energy power plants. Renewable energy which is the object of this research is a photovoltaic and wind power plant. Both of these renewables act as distributed generation (DG). The media used to reduce current faults is Superconducting Fault Current Limiting (SFCL). SFCL has an impedance value close to 0 when operating normally, but in the short circuit condition the impedance value be very high. A very high impedance value will limit the current fault in the conductor. Scenario 1 is short circuit on bus 14 without DG. Scenario 2 is short circuit on bus 14 with photovoltaic. Scenario 3 installed wind power plant on bus 14. Scenario 4 installed a combination of photo voltaic and wind power plant on bus 14. The existence of SFCL can significantly reduce the level of short circuit current faults. SFCL can also cut or reduce the subtransient and transient periods in scenario 3 and scenario 4. At the beginning of the short circuit, the total current fault curve only has a steady state period. This means that SFCL is able to cut the current fault level less than ¼ cycle at the wind power plant. Short circuit in photovoltaic (scenario 2), there is no subtransient and transient period.