9th International Conference on Probabilistic Methods Applied to Power Systems KTH, Stockholm, Sweden June 11-15, 2006

Reliability Enhancement in Switching Substations Using Fault Current Limiters

S. Behzadi Rafi M. Fotuhi-Firuzabad T. S. Sidhu
Fellow IEEE Department of Electrical Engineering University of Western Ontario London, Canada Senior member IEEE Department of Electrical Engineering Sharif University of Technology Tehran, Iran

Abstract Power system equipments are normally designed for a specific system and load situation. This situation could change significantly as a result of the system expansion or aging. Among the system equipments, circuit breakers are more sensitive to the system expansion and they must be able to isolate the faulty components if a fault occurs. As the system load increases in the future, the power network must be expanded. In this situation, either the switching equipments must be replaced in order to be able to respond to the new fault current or the fault current must be limited to the interrupting capability of the existing circuit breakers. Application of Fault current Limiters (FCL) serves as a promising answer to solve this problem. FCL allows for more reliable configurations without fault current problems. In this paper, the impact of using FCL in switching substations is studied and possible solutions are presented. The study is performed on the conventional double bus-bar arrangement. The study results show the effectiveness of this device in limiting the short circuit current as well as enhancing the load point reliability. Aging is another important factor that increases the failure rate of components and decreases the system reliability as such. Study results show that sensitivity of system parameters to the variation of failure rates and aging effects is reduced by using FCL. Index Terms Switching Substations, Fault Current Limiter, Reliability Indices.

I. INTRODUCTION Fault currents contain extremely high energy levels that can damage electrical equipment and pose shock and fire hazards to the public. Therefore there is a high tendency in utilities towards managing the fault current problems in an efficient way. The growth in the generation of electrical energy particularly in the form of connecting independent power producers (IPPs) to the basic network and an increased interconnection of the power grids has led to even higher fault currents which has not been included in the original long term planning forecasts. One of the consequences of this growth is that the network and the associated equipments reach or even exceed their limits with respect to the short circuit current withstand capabilities. In general, short circuit breaking capacities of switchgears are standardized. In the event that the fault level rises above the existing switchgear rating, it 1

becomes necessary to find alternatives to reduce the fault level as a cheaper alternative compare to the replacement of the switchgear, which in most cases is a costly solution. Fault current limiters (FCL) reduce the fault current and make possible the use of lower rated protective devices. Their primary benefit is in saving the cost of removing lower rated and installing higher rated equipment in existing installations. FCLs reduce the short circuit level, hence providing more secure system operation. With these devices installed in the circuit, parallel paths could be tied together to enhance reliability without any concern for the increment in the total short circuit level. This implies that employing FCL in distribution systems improves the system reliability by reducing damages to equipments due to short circuit events and preventing undesired load curtailment. Recent publications show the increasing interest in the subject [1,2]. Series reactors used to be fault current limiters for many years. The main drawback of the series reactors is that they produce significant resistive losses. Many different types of fault current limiters have been developed over the years. Even though there is not a general specification for a fault current limiter, the most common types of FCLs can be classified as fault current limiting reactors, high voltage current limiting fuses, pyrotechnic fault current limiters (Is-limiter), thyristor controlled series compensator with fault current limitation, solid state limiter and superconductive limiter [3]. These devices are basically required to provide: (1) rapid response to fault currents (2) low impedance in normal operation and (3) large impedance during fault conditions [4]. The impact of using FCL in switching substations on reliability is examined and possible solutions are presented in this paper. In this application, the FCLs are installed in a substation system to reduce the peak short-circuit current at the very first current rise. The study is performed on the conventional double bus-bar system and the optimum location is introduced. The study results show the effectiveness of this device in limiting the short circuit current as well as enhancing the load point reliability.

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9th International Conference on Probabilistic Methods Applied to Power Systems KTH, Stockholm, Sweden June 11-15, 2006

(a)

(b)

(c) Figure 1. Various FCL positions in distribution systems: (a) FCL in the transformer position (b) FCL in the feeder position (c) FCL in the bus-tie position

II. APPLICATION OF FCL IN SWITCHING SUBSTATIONS Fault Current Limiters (FCLs) can be applied in a number of distribution or transmission areas. Three main applications are shown in Figures 1 (a) to (c). Among various possible locations for FCLs, bus-tie location represents an effective solution to the fault current problems [5] since it has the following advantages: separate buses can be tied together without a large increase in the fault duty on either bus during a fault, a large voltage drop across the limiter maintains voltage level on the un-faulted bus the paralleled transformers result in low system impedance and good voltage regulation; tapchanging transformers can be avoided excess capacity of each bus is available to both buses, thus making better use of the transformer rating III. RELIABILITY EVALUATION TECHNIQUE Station reliability assessment is usually done using failure modes and effects analysis [6]. The basis of this method is to identify whether the failure of a component or combination of components causes the failure of the load point of interest. If it does, the event is counted as a load point failure event. Otherwise, it is

disregarded at least as far as the load point of interest is concerned. The consequence of a given failure event is then identified according to the severity of the failure. Equations 1 to 3 are respectively used to calculate the expected failure rate, average outage duration and average annual outage time associated with overlapping independent outage of two components.
pp = 12 ( r1 + r2 ) 12 (r1 + r2 ) 1 + 1r1 + 2 r2
when i ri << 1

(1)

rpp

rr = 12 r1 + r2

(3) Where 1 , r1 and 2 , r2 are failure rate and repair time of components 1 and 2, respectively. As all the events are assumed to be mutually exclusive, they are effectively in series from a reliability point of view. The system indices can therefore be evaluated using Equations 4 to 6 in which i and ri are respectively average failure rate and average outage time associated with the ith event.

U pp = pp . rpp = 1 2 r1r2

(2)

s = i
i i

(4) (5)

U s = i . ri

2
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9th International Conference on Probabilistic Methods Applied to Power Systems KTH, Stockholm, Sweden June 11-15, 2006

rs =

Us

.r =
i i i i

Table 2. Failure modes of double bus system without FCL Failure U (f/yr) r (hours) Event (hours/yr)

(6)

6 10

0.01 0.01 2.739E-07 1.484E-07 2.739E-07 0.005 0.005 0.005 0.005 7.420E-08 7.420E-08 0.0005 0.0005 0.0005 0.0005 0.0005 0.0425008

1 12 6 0.923076 6 1 1 1 1 0.923076 0.923076 1 1 1 1 1 3.5882

0.01 0.12 1.643E-06 1.369E-07 1.643E-06 0.005 0.005 0.005 0.005 6.849E-08 6.849E-08 0.0005 0.0005 0.0005 0.0005 0.0005 0.1525035

IV.

RELIABILITY EVALUATION WITH FCL

In order to examine the impacts of employing FCL on station reliability, double bus-bar configuration is used for the analysis. Some of the failure modes of the substation which cause interruption of Load points in the absence of FCL are eliminated when FCL is employed. This means a decrease in the interruption rate of Load point L1. Since the reliability indices of the entire substation are determined through these failure modes [6], using FCL improves the reliability indices of substations, as it was expected. The worth of employing FCL is examined by comparing the reliability indices for two cases. In the first case, the reliability indices associated with the double bus-bar arrangement are calculated without installing FCL. In the second case, the reliability indices are calculated in the presence of FCL. The reliability data used in these calculations are shown in Table 1.
Table 1. Station reliability data

1+2 1+5 1+9 1Aa 3A 8A 9A 7A+1 11A+1 7A+9S 2A+9S 4A+9S 5A+9S 11A+9S Total

Element

Failure Rate (f/yr) Open circuit short circuit 0.005 0.005 0.005 total 0.01 0.01 0.01

Repair time (hrs) 12 4 4

Switching time (hrs) 1 1 1

CB
Disconnector Switch

0.005 0.005 0.005

1A: Active Failure in component 1

Bus

Table 2 shows the study results associated with the station configuration Double Bus depicted in Figure 2.
L1 L2 10 11

F CL a 9 b 5 3 1 4 2

Figure 2. Double bus-bar system

All the failure events affecting Load point L1 are shown in the table 2. Similar calculations could be conducted for L2 due to the symmetry of the circuits. Some of

the failure events which were previously affecting Load point L1 are eliminated by installing the FCL. The modified results are shown in Table 3. The associated events are therefore disregarded for the load point of interest. In the results presented in this paper overlapping forced outages up to second-order, first order active failures and first-order active failures overlapping a stuck breaker are considered. The probability that a breaker fails to open when required (stuck-breaker probability) is assumed to be 0.1 for all cases. Moreover, the FCL is assumed to be fully reliable. Comparing the results shown in Table 3 with those shown in Table 2, it can be seen that using FCL in the double bus-bar configuration reduces the interruption rate by about 50%. Results follow that FCL could reduce the interruption rate of substations in that it prevents loads from being curtailed in exposure of short circuit events. Obviously, full coordination shall exist between the protection system and the FCL to allow the proper enhancement in the load point reliability. It has to be noted that most of the interruptions removed by the FCL are short interruptions. This is evident as most of the short interruptions with duration of one 3

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9th International Conference on Probabilistic Methods Applied to Power Systems KTH, Stockholm, Sweden June 11-15, 2006

hour in Table 2 do not appear in Table 3. These interruptions are caused by short circuit events and are restored in the switching time of one hour. Besides these events, there are other outage events in Table 2 which have longer durations and generally involve passive failures of one or two components. FCL can not prevent these kinds of outages and therefore they are still listed in Table 3. This feature of FCL in eliminating the short interruptions and maintaining the long interruptions has increased the average outage duration r from 3.6 to 5.4 hours. This increase is a result of the average point calculations and is misleading. The dominating fact is, however, the decrease in the entire interruption rate and annual interruption hours U caused by the FCL. One of the problems associated with the aging phenomena of a substation is the decline in the performance of elements. This also applies to the failure rate of various components that get increased as a result of aging and will cause a poor reliability over years. Figure 3 illustrates the variation in expected interruption rate, due to changes in circuit breaker failure rate, for the station with and without FCL. As expected, interruption rate increases as the circuit breaker failure rate increases.
Table 3. Failure modes of double bus system with FCL Failure U (f/yr) r (hours) Event (hours/yr) 6 10 1+2 1+5 1+9 0.01 0.01 2.739E-07 1.484E-07 2.739E-07 1 12 6 0.923076 6 0.01 0.12 1.643E-06 1.369E-07 1.643E-06

0.14 Interuuption rate (f/yr) 0.12 0.1 0.08 0.06 0.04 0.02 0 0

Without FCL With FCL

0.01 0.02 0.03 a-Circuit Breakers (f/yr)

0.04

Figure 3. Variation of with respect to failure rate of circuit breaker for the double bus-bar configuration

The results also indicate that sensitivity of with respect to circuit breaker failure rate is less when using FCL compared to that of without FCL. This can clearly be seen as the slope of the lines associated with the case with FCL is less than that of the case without FCL. This indicates that when FCL is used, station reliability is not much affected by high failure rate of individual components as a result of component aging. V. CONCLUSION By reliability calculation on a substation configuration, using typical reliability data, it was shown in this paper that FCL enhances the reliability indices of a switching substation. Further studies could be performed by comparing the benefits of using an FCL to improve the reliability of supply to load points, with the additional investment cost of the FCL. Simulation results also show that FCL reduces the sensitivity of reliability indices to data variations. This could be very important especially in places where there are considerable uncertainties in the input data. Results demonstrate the need to perform sensitivity studies associated with the component data before a final choice of system design or reinforcement is made.
[1]

8A 7A+1

0.005 7.420E-08

1 0.923076

0.005 6.849E-08

11A+1

7.420E-08

0.923076

6.849E-08

[2] [3]

Total

0.0250008

5.39996

0.135003

[4]

[5] [6]

VI. REFERENCES Sokolovsky V., Meerovich V., Vajda I., and Beilin V., Superconducting FCL: Design and Application, IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity, Vol. 14, No. 3, Sep. 2004. Lu Z., Jiang D., and Wu Z., A New Topology of Fault Current Limiter and Its Parameter Optimization, IEEE Conference 2003. Wu X., Mutale J., Jenkins N. and Strbac G., An Investigation of Network Splitting for Fault Level Reduction, The Manchester Centre for Electrical Energy (MCEE), UMIST, UK, January 2003. Ichikawan M. and Okazaki M., A Magnetic Shielding Type Superconducting Fault Current Limiter Using a Bi2212 Thick Film Cylinder, IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity, Vol.5, No.2, June 1995. J. Cerulli, Requirements for a Superconducting Fault Current Limiter in the Utility Bus-Tie Location, IEEE proceedings 1998. pp 950-955. Billinton, R. and Allan, R. N., Reliability Evaluation of Power Systems, Plenum Press, 1996.

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9th International Conference on Probabilistic Methods Applied to Power Systems KTH, Stockholm, Sweden June 11-15, 2006

VII. BIOGRAPHIES
S. Behzadi-Rafi was born in Iran. Obtained his B.Sc. and M.Sc. Degrees in Electrical Engineering from University of Tehran and Sharif University of Technology in 1997 and 1999 respectively. He is presently a Ph.D. student in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. M. Fotuhi-Firuzabad (Senior Member, 99) was born in Iran. Obtained B.Sc. and M.Sc. Degrees in Electrical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology and Tehran University in 1986 and 1989 respectively and M.Sc. and Ph.D. Degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Saskatchewan in 1993 and 1997 respectively. Dr. FotuhiFiruzabad worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Saskatchewan from Jan. 1998 to Sept. 2000 and from Sept. 2001 to Sept. 2002 where he conducted research in the area of power system reliability. He worked as an assistant professor in the same department from Sept. 2000 to Sept. 2001. Presently he is Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. T. S. Sidhu (Fellow 2003) received the B.E. (Hons.) degree from the Punjabi University, Patiala, India in 1979 and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada in 1985 and 1989 respectively. He worked for the Regional Computer Center, Chandigarh, India, Punjab State Electricity Board, India and Bell-Northern Research Ltd., Ottawa, Canada. He is presently head of the Electrical Engineering Department, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada. His areas of research interest are power system protection, monitoring and control.

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