Insulation supporter selection for winding in superconducting fault current limiter

Resistance type superconducting fault current limiter (SFCL) is a promising current limiter. It needs to fulfill the requirement of O-CO-CO duty in power system. So quench recovery time of YBCO superconducting tapes is very important. When superconducting tape is used in SFCL, insulation supporter should be used to support superconducting tapes and insulate it. There are many researches on quench recovery time, but the relationship between quench recovery time and insulation supporter is not clear. The object of this paper is to find the relationship between quench recovery time and insulation supporter. YBCO superconducting tapes were used, which had a critical current of 102A. Recovery time experiment was done with different insulation supporters. One insulation supporter was the KAPTON polyimide insulation layer, and another one was the slot made of nylon. The experiment result shows that insulation supporter only influents recovery time. And the recovery time with the KAPTON polyimide insulation layer is far larger than bared tape. Therefore this kind of insulation is bad for SFCL. And the slot insulation has similar recovery time with bared tape. Thus it is good to use the slot insulation in SFCL. Therefore, the slot insulation is better than the KAPTON polyimide insulation layer when it is used in SFCLs. This result is useful for superconducting tape windings.