Design and testing of full-scale 10 kV prototype of inductive fault current limiter with a common core and trifilar windings

Fault Current Limiters (FCLs) are expected to play an important role in protection of future power systems against excessive fault currents. Inductive saturated-core FCLs have supreme performance in comparison to other FCLs types: inherent reaction on a fault, inherent post-fault recovery and unrestricted duration of a fault limiting period. However, they are not commercialized due to too large amount of magnetic material. The new three-phase FCL topology with a common core and trifilar windings is recently introduced. It considerably reduces the amount of FCL magnetic material and the associated FCL cost. To prove the concept and to demonstrate the FCL ability to protect the power system, the full-scale 10 kV/6.8 MVA FCL prototype is designed and built. The testing is divided in two stages: low-voltage 400 V and full-voltage 10 kV testing. This paper presents the obtained results from the low-voltage testing. The experimental results verified that the FCL can successfully limit a fault current. The comparison with the Finite Element (FE) simulation results is provided. The matching of the results is very good.