A Comparative Investigation of Presaturated Core Fault Current Limiters Biased by DC Current and Permanent Magnet

In this paper, the dc biasing magnetomotive force (mmf) in presaturated core fault current limiter (PCFCL) is replaced with permanent magnet (PM) to overcome the well-known drawbacks of the dc biased PCFCLs. These drawbacks are excessively induced voltage across the terminals of the dc coil during fault condition and high total power losses during the steady-state condition. The novel contributions of this paper are the introduction of the selection criteria of PM material and its representation by actual nonlinear B-H hysteresis loop of Jiles-Atherton method, and the use of PM alone as an equivalent to the dc biasing coils for three-phase fault current limiter (FCL), contrary to work reported in earlier papers. Single- and three-phase PCFCLs are modified by replacement of dc saturation coil by the equivalent PM through time-domain finite element (FE) simulation of COMSOL Multiphysics package. Experimental verification shows that the implementation of accurate nonlinear representation of PM demagnetization curve with FE simulation gives a realistic performance of the PM biased PCFCL, especially in the fault condition. The performance of PCFCL can be evaluated through the voltage drop and total power losses during the steady-state condition and the fault current clipping ratio during fault condition of the grid. Furthermore, a comparative investigation of dynamic behavior is considered between dc and PM biased PCFCLs. It is found that the PM biased PCFCL has enriched capability of limiting any type of fault current with leading advantages of reduced voltage drop and power losses significantly together with risk elimination of the high induced voltage across dc coil terminals. Moreover, the governing parameters of PM biased PCFCLs are subjected to performance analysis to study their inherent effects.