Improvement of Recovery Characteristics of a Flux-Lock Type SFCL Using a Superconductor's Trigger

To achieve the effective performance of the flux-lock type superconducting fault current limiter (SFCL), the countermeasures to improve the recovery characteristics of the flux-lock type SFCL are required. In this paper, as one of the solutions, the method using a superconductor's trigger when the quench in the high-TC superconducting (HTSC) element occurred was suggested. To verify the suggested method in case of the fault occurrence, the control circuit to detect the quench of HTSC element and the current limiting resistor (CLR) to limit the fault current were designed and fabricated. With the fabricated control circuit and the CLR, the fault current limiting and recovery characteristics of the flux-lock type SFCL using the suggested method were tested. Through the analysis for the experimental results, the recovery characteristics of the flux-lock type SFCL could be confirmed to be improved than the SFCL not using the superconductor's trigger.