ASSESSMENT OF PARALLEL TYPE RESONANCE BASED FCL FOR DIFFERENT FAULT CONDITIONS

Short circuit current limitation in distribution utilities can be an effective way to improve power quality, since the expected voltage sag amplitude during faults can be dramatically reduced. The proposed structure prevents voltage sag and phase-angle jump of the substation PCC after fault occurrence. Alternative to expensive system upgrades of protection devices, Fault Current Limiters (FCL’s) provide more cost-effective solutions to prevent old protection devices and other equipment on the system from being damaged by excessive fault currents. The proposed structure prevents voltage sag and phase-angle jump of the substation PCC after fault occurrence. This paper proposes a new parallel-LC-resonance type fault current limiter (FCL) that uses a resistor in series with a capacitor. The proposed FCL is capable of limiting the fault current magnitude near to the pre-fault magnitude of distribution feeder current by placing the mentioned resistor in the structure of the FCL. In this way, the voltage of the point of common coupling does not experience considerable sag during the fault. In addition, the proposed FCL does not use a superconducting inductor which has high construction cost. Analytical analysis for this structure is presented in detail, and simulation results using power system computer-aided design/electromagnetic transients, including dc software are obtained to validate the effectiveness of this structure. The simulation results are obtained using MATLAB/SIMULINK software