Effect of Circuit Breaker Arc on Faulted Inductive and Capacitive Circuit on a Transmission Line

Authors: Obi PI, Amako EA, Ezeonye CS

DOI Info: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5048075

ABSTRACT

This paper presents the effect of circuit breaker arc on transmission line comprising inductive and capacitive circuit with terminal faults and short line faults. This was realized with the aid of MATLAB and PSCAD/EMTDC software. The system voltage, current, arc current, arc voltage and transient recovery voltage during fault conditions were analyzed for all for four (4) cases. The analysis shows the respective system voltage and current plots as well as the breaker arc voltage and currents plots. The fault occurs at 0.2 seconds while breaker operation was between 0.3 seconds to 0.5 seconds. The circuit breaker separation was studied at t = 0 secs and t =0.009 seconds and the TRV and current zero-crossing were recorded. A TRV of 1.985 × 10^-5 V and a zero crossing at t = 3.24 × 10^-3 s were recorded with interruption of small inductive currents and current chopping. The transient recovery voltage was 1.59 × 10⁵ V and its breaker zero crossing at t = 2.1 × 10^-2 s was recorded during interruption of capacitive currents. Also, the first transient recovery voltage was 2.66 × 10⁵ V and its zero crossing occurred at t = 0.0149 s with interruption of terminal faults. Similarly, the TRV was 1.59 × 10⁵ V and the breaker zero crossing occurred at t = 2.1 × 10^-2 s from contact separation when fault was between a distance for of a few kilometers from the circuit breaker.

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