Determining the location of superconducting fault current limiter considering distribution reliability

As electric power demand of customers is constantly increasing, more bulk power systems are needed for installation in a network. The amount of distributed resources has increased considerably in distribution networks by meeting the demand for renewable energies, highly efficient facilities and a deregulated electricity market. These networks have become more and more complex as mesh network for improving system reliability and flexibility of network operation. This increasing complexity has resulted in an increase in fault currents that exceed a circuit breaker capacity. In order to solve this problem, replacing breaker, changing operation mode of system and rectifying transformer parameters can be taken into account. However, the superconducting fault current limiter (SFCL) is economically one of the most promising power apparatus. This study proposes a methodology for determining the location of SFCL by considering the reduction of fault current by device type and the improvement of reliability by customer type according to the location of SFCL in a distribution network connected with distributed generation (DG). With case studies on the method of determining location for SFCL applied to a radial network and a mesh network, respectively, the authors prove that the proposed method is feasible.