Fault Locating, Prediction and Protection (FLPPS)

One of the main objectives of this DOE-sponsored project was to reduce customer outage time. Fault location, prediction, and protection are the most important aspects of fault management for the reduction of outage time. In the past most of the research and development on power system faults in these areas has focused on transmission systems, and it is not until recently with deregulation and competition that research on power system faults has begun to focus on the unique aspects of distribution systems. This project was planned with three Phases, approximately one year per phase. The first phase of the project involved an assessment of the state-of-the-art in fault location, prediction, and detection as well as the design, lab testing, and field installation of the advanced protection system on the SCE Circuit of the Future located north of San Bernardino, CA. The new feeder automation scheme, with vacuum fault interrupters, will limit the number of customers affected by the fault. Depending on the fault location, the substation breaker might not even trip. Through the use of fast communications (fiber) the fault locations can be determined and the proper fault interrupting switches opened automatically. With knowledge of circuit loadings at the timemore » of the fault, ties to other circuits can be closed automatically to restore all customers except the faulted section. This new automation scheme limits outage time and increases reliability for customers. The second phase of the project involved the selection, modeling, testing and installation of a fault current limiter on the Circuit of the Future. While this project did not pay for the installation and testing of the fault current limiter, it did perform the evaluation of the fault current limiter and its impacts on the protection system of the Circuit of the Future. After investigation of several fault current limiters, the Zenergy superconducting, saturable core fault current limiter was selected for installation. Because of some testing problems with the Zenergy fault current limiter, installation was delayed until early 2009 with it being put into operation on March 6, 2009. A malfunction of the FCL controller caused the DC power supply to the superconducting magnet to be turned off. This inserted the FCL impedance into the circuit while it was in normal operation causing a voltage resonance condition. While these voltages never reached a point where damage would occur on customer equipment, steps were taken to insure this would not happen again. The FCL was reenergized with load on December 18, 2009. A fault was experienced on the circuit with the FCL in operation on January 14, 2010. The FCL operated properly and reduced the fault current by about 8%, what was expected from tests and modeling. As of the end of the project, the FCL was still in operation on the circuit. The third phase of the project involved the exploration of several advanced protection ideas that might be at a state where they could be applied to the Circuit of the Future and elsewhere in the SCE electrical system. Based on the work done as part of the literature review and survey, as well as a number of internal meetings with engineering staff at SCE, a number of ideas were compiled. These ideas were then evaluated for applicability and ability to be applied on the Circuit of the Future in the time remaining for the project. Some of these basic ideas were implemented on the circuit including measurement of power quality before and after the FCL. It was also decided that we would take what was learned as part of the Circuit of the Future work and extend it to the next generation circuit protection for SCE. Also at this time, SCE put in a proposal to the DOE for the Irvine Smart Grid Demonstration using ARRA funding. SCE was successful in obtaining funding for this proposal, so it was felt that exploration of new protection schemes for this Irvine Smart Grid Demonstration would be a good use of the project resources. With this in mind, a protection system that uses fault interrupting switches, high speed communications, and looping two radial distribution circuits would have the potential for significant reductions in interruption time and number of interruptions for customers.« less