Energy Storing and Fault Current Limiting in a Unified Superconducting Magnetic Device

This work describes a novel concept for unifying Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage (SMES) and an inductive-type Fault Current Limiter (FCL). A single superconducting coil is used both as an energy source for the operation of the SMES and as the field source for saturating the magnetic cores in the FCL. A possible geometry model for the implementation of this concept is suggested and a test case in an 11 kV, 10 MVA network is described for a fully, and 50% charged SMES states. Results show that the Saturated Cores FCL exhibits low insertion impedance and high limiting ratio in both scenarios. The unified SMES-FCL device saves major resources by making the superconducting coil a dual-purpose source, thus opening the door for an easier and efficient implementation of SMES and FCL technologies.