Study on Protection Coordination Between Protective Devices in a Power Distribution System With an SFCL

As one of the countermeasures to solve the increase problem of the fault current in a power system, the superconducting fault current limiter (SFCL) has been noticed as the attractive device because it has no power loss in a normal time and can limit the fault current rapidly without additional device to detect the fault current. However, the introduction of the SFCL in a power distribution system affects the protection coordination between the existing protective devices such as the over-current relay (OCR) and the recloser, which causes the operation of the protective devices to get out of their original setting values. Therefore, the analysis on the effect of the SFCL introduction on the existing protective devices is required and the method to keep the protection coordination between the protective devices in a power system with the SFCL should be first considered. In this paper, the protection coordination experiments between the OCR and the recloser in the simulated power distribution system with the SFCL were performed. Based on the experimental results, the influence of the SFCL on the operation of these protective devices was analysed and the methods to keep the protection coordination between the OCR and the recloser in a power distribution system with the SFCL were discussed.