Protection of Stand-Alone Wind Energy Conversion System using Bridge Type Fault Current Limiters

There is a need to protect large wind farms from fault conditions. The paper has a wind turbine generator system producing power for single phase loads located at different lengths of the transmission lines. In this paper, initially, over current relay was used to protect the system. Over current relay employs inverse time- current characteristics to perform the tripping operation. Because of relay operation, the current flow is intermittent in the lines. Further studies were done on to limit the fault current magnitude flowing in the circuit. For this purpose, Fault Current Limiter was used. Fault Current Limiter consists of bridge arrangement of diodes and thyristors for normal operation. Anti- parallel arrangement of diodes with thyristors with a reactance limits the fault current magnitude. It was found that by using Fault Current Limiter, the fault current magnitude was reduced by a greater degree.