Restoration and testing of an HTS fault current controller

A three-phase, 1200 A, 12.5 kV fault current controller using three high temperature superconducting, HTS 4 mH coils, was built by industry and tested in 1999 at the Center Substation of Southern California Edison in Norwalk, CA. During the testing, it appeared that each of the three single-phase units had experienced a voltage breakdown, one externally and two internally. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) was asked by DOE to restore the operation of the fault current controller provided the HTS coils had not been damaged during the initial substation tests. When the internally-failed coil vacuum vessels were opened it became evident that in these two vessels, a flashover had occurred at the high voltage bus section leading to the terminals of the superconducting coil. An investigation into the failure mechanism resulted in six possible causes for the flashover. Based on these causes, the high voltage bus was completely redesigned. Single-phase tests were successfully performed on the modified unit at a 13.7 kV LANL substation. This paper presents the postulated voltage flashover failure mechanisms, the new high voltage bus design which mitigates the failure mechanisms, the sequence of tests used to validate the new design, and finally, the results of variable load and short-circuit tests with the single-phase unit operating on the LANL 13.7 kV substation.