An Investigation into Arc Self-extinguishing Characteristics on Peterson Coil Compensated System

Single-phase-earth arcing faults constitute the largest proportion of faults on non-effectively grounded system. And arc self-extinction behavior is involved determining the neutral grounding mode in such system. Peterson coil compensated system in the paper refers to power system of neutral with Peterson coil compensating the network currents. The extinction and the re-ignition of arc are determined by the competition between the recovery voltage and the dielectric recovering strength of arc channel. In general, the insulation strength is the intrinsic characteristics of the arc channel. And the peak value and the rising rate of recovery voltage in the fault phase would be reduced with Peterson coil. Lots of laboratory tests under arcing faults are performed in 10 kV distribution network. Test circuit is set up, and taking arc films with the high-speed video camera. Distributions of arc duration times are derived, extracting arc self-extinction features. Further, arc self-extinguishing probability is computed and therefore proposes the limit value of the residual current on Peterson coil compensated system. The test results have validated the effective compensation of Peterson coil and the over-voltage restriction by the neutral resistor.