Reliability Assessment of Switching Substations Using Superconductive Fault Current Limiters

Electric power system designers often face fault current problems when expanding existing buses. Configurations that enhance the reliability, such as parallel systems, raise the fault current level of the system, forcing the replacement of existing bus-work and switchgears not rated for the new fault duties. A Superconducting Fault Current Limiter (SCFCL) servers as a promising answer to solve the problem. A SCFCL allows for more reliable configurations without fault current problems, and therefore considerable attention is being paid to the use of these devices in substation systems. In this paper, the application of SCFCL's in increasing the reliability of power grids is studied using the conventional configurations of switching substations. Reliability evaluation shows the effectiveness of SCFCLs in various configurations.