Interaction between fault current limiters and protection - A glance at the final report of CIGRE WG-A3.16

A deregulated power market is making short-circuit currents likely to exceed the thermal or mechanical permissible limits of switchgear. Consequently fault current limiters (FCL) become more applicable in power systems. The use of FCLs has an impact on the protection schemes and functions in electrical systems. Thus, before FCLs will be applied in the network the interactions between this new substation equipment and the existing protection system must be understood. Depending on the current limiting technique used, todaypsilas protection concepts may have to be adapted or revised to ensure proper network protection selectivity. A relationship between fault current limiters and protection schemes should be established by taking into account both protection and network specific issues, such as the impact of different FCL technologies, existing and new protection concepts, selectivity, and innovative network. This paper is presenting a first frame work for accomplishing this task.