Arc Flash Mitigation Through Use Of Voltage Controlled/Voltage Restrained Overcurrent Elements

This paper explores voltage controlled overcurrent and voltage controlled ground overcurrent elements which provides a means of allowing pickup currents to be set much lower than in conventional time coordinated overcurrent without loss of coordination. These systems will have circuit breaker based switchgear, overcurrent relaying at each breaker and may have other protection, although most are limited to overcurrent protection. Compared to a system using only inverse time overcurrent, use of voltage controlled overcurrent elements reduces the PPE (personal protective equipment) requirements around the switchgear in the system modeled