Circuit of the Future - fault current limiter

[magoo2]

I read a news item last week where Southern California Edison announced their futuristic concept for distribution circuits. As news items go, this was sketchy on details.

What I've been able to gather is that this project had a lot of hands in it - Dept of Energy, EPRI, KEMA, etc.

One detail relates to the use of a fault current limiter. It is not clear where they would use them. Presumably it would be at the source end of the circuit.

Some details I found in the link

http://www.ieee.org/portal/cms_docs...older/T_D_2005_2006/tuesday/pn17/05TD0289.pdf

If anyone has more details to share on this topic, I'd be interested hearing about them.

 

[oldfieldguy]

Ah, are you absolutely sure that you're not thinking of the soon to be announced "fault anticipator'?

I'm on the waiting list for the first production run...

old field guy

 

[Marmite]

Sounds suspiciously similar to the Is limiter already produced by ABB.

http://www.abb.com/Product/seitp328/c1256ccb004e3abbc125698c00553a43.aspx?tabKey=6

I didn't pick it up from the text so I'm guessing, but presumably the new version is resettable, which would be an advance over the ABB offering.

Regards
Marmite

 

[stevenal]

They refer to the super conductor version. This device has a non-linear reactance; low at load current levels, high at fault levels. Nothing to reset, since it doesn't interrupt. It is used to allow better coordination of downstream equipment since fault currents are lower. I presume the solid state version is similar.