Increasing Energy Efficiency of Saturated-Core Fault Current Limiters With Permanent Magnets

Fault current limiters are devices that limit currents in electrical networks during a fault event, such as power lines touching or arcing due to tree branches. In this paper, two designs for small-scale saturated-core fault current limiters are discussed: one that uses DC coils to saturate the cores, and one that uses a hybrid design with DC coils and permanent magnet blocks. The hybrid design is found to meet the same performance criteria with a 50% reduction in energy consumption when compared to the DC coil only design.