State of Art of Power Electronics in Circuit Breaker Technology

Circuit breakers play an important role in an electrical system performance in terms of system safety, control, maintenance and cost. In some cases, the conventional mechanical circuit breakers (MCB) may be too slow for the electrical network to operate within the desired safety limits. Besides their other limitations, the MCB also forces the network elements to be rated much higher. The uses of power semiconductor devices to overcome some of their limitations are discussed in this paper. These usages are in terms of solid-state circuit breaker (SCB) and hybrid circuit breaker (HCB) concepts. This paper summarizes and reviews the various circuits of SCB and HCB available in the literature. The relevant simulation results for some example circuits have also been presented in this paper. This study will provide a useful framework and point of reference for the future development of HCB and SCB technologies.