DC GRIDS: New over current protection

Fuses and Circuit Breakers play an important safety role in electrical transportation systems. Challenging new applications, especially in DC grids, have brought conventional current limiting devices to their limits. Indeed, mechanical circuit breakers may be too slow to open for networks with large DC fault currents. On the other hand, fuses may be too slow to open with very low DC fault currents. For AC applications, the natural zero crossing will help clear fault currents. In DC applications, the no natural zero crossing makes clearing faults by conventional current limiting technologies difficult. This paper presents a new solution to protect DC transportation using a fuse and pyroswitch hybrid system. This will apply to PV generation, energy storage, Electric Vehicles.