Circuit Breaker Transient Recovery Voltage in Presence of Source Side Shunt Capacitor Bank

Reactive power compensation through connection of shunt capacitor banks is a common practice in medium voltage systems. But the presence of capacitor bank leads to some interesting phenomena in switching transients. Clearing of a fault on line side of breaker in the presence of a source side capacitor bank is one such phenomenon. While clearing the fault if there is any re-ignition, presence of capacitor bank will develop high frequency discharge current that is superimposed on the power frequency fault current. Interruption of this high frequency current would cause considerable increase in the TRV magnitude. This paper describes the above phenomenon with PSCAD simulation results of a practical system. It also explains the effect of various parameters on the breaker TRV magnitude.