Optimum positioning of superconducting fault current limiter for wind farm fault current in smart grid

The ever-increasing demand for electrical energy has resulted in increased size of generating stations and interconnected distribution network which leads to the risk of increasing abnormal operation. The conventional circuit breakers cannot be used in the power system network as the increasing fault current levels may soon cross its rated fault current breaking capacity. Superconducting fault current limiter (SFCL) offers an attractive solution to many of the concerned issues faced. This paper presents a novel method to determine the optimal allocation of multiple resistive superconducting fault current limiters (SFCLs) aiming to improve the overall protection of power grid. A power system model with resistive SFCL was implemented in MATLAB/Simulink software with dispersed energy resource to find out feasible location. Wind farm having 10 MVA capacities is used as dispersed energy resource for simulation. A transient analysis is performed for three phase to ground fault, which is placed at customer grid, and results are presented for the effect of the SFCL and its various locations on the wind farm fault current. The methodology developed shows the optimal location of SFCL assessed in the grid with wind farm when fault occurs in customer grid.