Can Linear Heat Sensors be a Good and Practical Replacement of Traditional Protective Fuses?

Modern electric power systems are very complicated, and the possibility of having faults and abnormal operations always exists. Thus, power system protection plays an important role to prevent these faults and mitigate their consequences. The most significant effect of short-circuit faults is the sudden increase of currents. Thus, overcurrent protection becomes the most widely used technique. Different devices are implemented to achieve that protection, such as: thermal/electrical relays, reclosers, sectionalizers, and fuses. This paper tries to take the advantages of techniques used in fire and gas (F&G) systems. One of these techniques is built based on what is called a linear heat sensor (LHS). This study is an attempt to check the possibility of using LHS as a new practical and very cheap protective element, and to discover its features and capabilities.