Fault Assessment and Mitigation of the 132kV Transmission Line in Nigeria using Improved Resonant Fault Current Limiting (RFCL) Protection Scheme

This research work proposed an improved Resonant Fault Current Limiting (RFCL) protection scheme to reduce the impact of three-phase short-circuit faults in a power system sub-transmission network. The model used an interpolator-extrapolator technique based on a Resonant Fault Current Limiter (RFCL) for automating the procedure of predicting the required reactor value that must be in resonant circuit to limit the short-circuit current values to permissible values. Using the developed model, short-circuit fault simulations on the three phases of the transmission line (Phase A-C) were performed in the MATLAB-SIMULINK environment. Simulation results were obtained by varying the resonant inductance (reactor) parameter of the RFCL circuit for each of the phases to obtain permissible short-circuit current levels and the values used to program a functional interpolator-extrapolator in MATLAB; the resonant values were typically set to values of inductance equal to 0.001H, 0.01H and from 0.1H to 0.5H in steps of 0.1H. Simulation results revealed the presence of very high short-circuit current levels at low values of the resonant inductor. From the results of simulations, there are indications that the RFCL approach is indeed very vital in the reduction of the short circuit current values during the fault and can safeguard the circuit breaker mechanism in the examined power system sub-transmission system. In addition, lower fault clearing times can be obtained at higher values of inductances; however, the clearance times start to converge at inductance values of 0.1H and above.