Transient Recovery Voltages Caused by Capacitor Switching in Wind Power Plants

This paper investigates transient recovery voltages across vacuum circuit breakers used for switching mechanically switched shunt capacitor banks in a wind power plant. Simulation case studies are conducted which investigate the transient recovery voltages with the original bank configuration and a number of modified configurations. It is shown that using the original configuration, with inrush current limiting reactor in series with the capacitor, can result in a breaker failure under most onerous conditions. A number of alternative configurations are proposed which allow the management of transient recovery voltages within the breaker withstand level.