30th Power System Conference (PSC2015), 23-25 November 2015, Niroo Research Institute, Tehran, Iran
Application of a Parallel-Resonance-Type FCL for
Maintaining the Recloser-Fuse Coordination in a
Power Distribution System with a Dispersed
Generation
M. J. Damghani, D. Faramarzi, H. A. Abyaneh, B. Vahidi
Department of Electrical Engineering
Amirkabir University of Technology
Tehran, Iran
m.jorjani@aut.ac.ir
Abstract Dispersed generation (DG) sources are rapidly
opening their way to the power systems. Despite the many
advantages that their introduction into the grid has, it may cause
some problems. One of the problems is increasing the short-
circuit current and the loss of protective devices coordination. To
deal with this problem, many different approaches have been
proposed. One of the best promising approaches of resolving the
problem is using a fault current limiter (FCL) to limit DGs
current during a short circuit fault.
In this paper, a parallel-resonance-type fault current limiter
is used in the interconnection point of the DG to the grid to keep
its current at its pre-fault value during a short circuit fault. A
comparative study is carried out through the short-circuit tests to
demonstrate the superiority of using this kind of FCL over the
conventional resonance-type one. The novelty of this paper is that
by using the mentioned FCL, operating times of the recloser and
fuse will be maintained at their values before the introduction of
DG. So, the recloser-fuse coordination can be restored with
higher coincidence with the pre-introduction of DG condition.
Furthermore, using this kind of FCL has less effect on the normal
system condition.
Keywords Dispersed generation (DG); short-circuit current;
parallel-resonance-type fault current limiter; resonance-type fault
current limiter; protection coordination
I. INTRODUCTION
Today, with the growing demand for electrical power and
the need for clean sources of energy, the use of dispersed
generation (DG) into the grid is becoming widespread.
Although the introduction of these sources into the grid has
many advantages, it might also cause some difficulties [1]. In
particular, with the use of high capacity DGs, fault current
levels of the system will be increased. It would arise the need
for replacing the existing circuit breakers with higher capacity
ones. Moreover, increasing of short circuit currents may result
in the loss of protective devices coordination.
Many works have been done to overcome these problems.
One solution is changing the setting parameters of the
978-1-5090-2705-7/15/$31.00 2015 IEEE 190
protective devices after the introduction of DGs into the grid.
However, this solution may not solve the aforementioned
circuit breakers problem. Another way is interrupting the DGs
when a short circuit fault occurs [2]. One of the best proposed
solutions is using of a fault current limiter to limit DGs
contribution to the fault current during a short circuit fault [3].
Fault current limiters have many different topologies
including superconducting FCLs, resonance-type FCLs and
solid-state FCLs. Superconducting FCLs limit the fault current
by using a superconducting coil. In the normal system
operating condition, this coil has little resistance. When a short
circuit fault occurs, the resistance of this coil will increase
drastically. Thus the current will be limited [4]. Resonance-
type FCLs limit the current by the resonance between their
capacitor and inductor during the fault. Solid-state FCLs use
power electronic devices to limit the fault current by changing
the flowing path of the current during the fault [5].
In this paper, application of a parallel-resonance-type fault
current limiter in maintaining the recloser-fuse coordination is
analyzed [6]. Since the mentioned fault current limiter is
already presented in literature, the explanations relating its
topology and principle of working will be described short.
Performance of this FCL in maintaining the coordination after
the introduction of DG into the system is studied on a typical
network. Then it is compared to a resonance-type fault current
limiter. Simulations are done using PSCAD/EMTDC and
MATLAB software.
II. THEORETICAL ANALYSIS
A. Resonance-type Fault Current Limiter
Fig. 1 shows a simple resonance-type fault current limiter.
The resistance R is used to model inductor losses. Values of
capacitor and inductor are selected so as to resonance at the
grid frequency, that is:
1
= (1)
LC
 Application of a Parallel-Resonance-Type FCL for Maintaining the Recloser-Fuse Coordination in a Power Distribution System with a
Dispersed Generation
30th Power System Conference - 2015 Tehran, Iran
Fig. 1. Resonance-type fault current limiter.
In the normal operating condition, the current flows
through the inductor L. When a short circuit fault occurs, the
control circuit will send firing signal to the gate of the
thyristors T1 and T2. Therefore, the capacitor will be
connected in parallel with the inductor. Because of the
resonance between the inductor and the capacitor, the
impedance will become nearly infinite. So the current, which
is now flowing through this impedance, will become zero
during the short circuit fault.
B. Parallel-resonance-type Fault Current Limiter
Fig. 2 shows the proposed parallel-resonance-type fault
current limiter. It consists of two main parts: a bridge part
which is composed of four diodes, a dc limiting reactor, and a
semiconductor switch, and a resonance part. The aim of this
FCL is to limit the current during a short circuit fault to its
pre-fault value. The operating principles of this FCL are
briefly explained below [6].
During normal condition, the semiconductor switch is ON.
So the current flows through D1, LDC , Switch and D4 in the
positive half cycle and D2, LDC , Switch and D3 in the
negative half cycle. Thus  will be charged to the peak of
the line current and will act as a short circuit. Therefore there
is no impedance in the currents path in this condition.
When a short circuit fault is detected, the semiconductor
switch will become OFF. As a result, the current will flow
through the resonance part of the FCL. The equivalent
impedance of the resonance part is as follows:
j L
 = Rsh - C || jLsh = shR C + jLsh (2)
sh sh sh
Considering (2), values of capacitor and resistor can be
selected so as to the fault currents magnitude becomes equal
to the pre-fault currents one. This procedure is described in
section III.
Fig. 2. Parallel-resonance-type fault current limiter.
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C. Recloser and Fuse and their Coordination Problem
Recloser and fuse are two of the main protective devices
which are used in the distribution networks. Reclosers are
used to prevent long interruptions of the system for an
instantaneous fault. A recloser has two kind of interrupting
curves: fast curve and slow curve. Whenever a fault is
detected on the system, the recloser operates with its fast curve
and clears the fault. After a predefined period of time, the
recloser connects the feeder again. If the fault is present on the
system, the recloser will do the same actions to clear the fault.
The number of recloser fast operations is adjustable. After
several fast operations of the recloser, if the fault is persistent
on the system, the fuse should operate and clear the fault. If
the fuse fails to operate correctly, the recloser will operate
with its slow curve to clear the fault. In fact, the slow curve of
the recloser is considered as a backup for the fuse [8].
In this study, the recloser is set to have one reclosing event
with the reclosing interval time of 0.25 s. The pickup current
of all the protective devices is 10 A. As there is no model for
recloser and fuse in PSCAD/EMTDC software, these devices
are modeled so as to fulfill their tasks properly. The fuse is
modeled using comparator and integrator blocks and the
recloser is consisted of overcurrent and some other logical
blocks, too [2].
III. SIMULATION RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
The recloser-fuse coordination problem is tested using the
power distribution system shown in fig. 3. Load 3 is linked to
a DG source through a fault current limiter. The effect of the
DG on recloser-fuse coordination is investigated for two
different kinds of fault current limiters, i.e. resonance-type and
parallel-resonance-type FCLs. Necessary data of the system
are represented in table I [7].
Fig. 3. Configuration of power distribution system.
TABLE I. SIMULATION SYSTEM PARAMETERS
T1 5 kVA, 200 V/ 60 V
Transformer
T2 1 kVA, 200 V/60 V
R1 +X1 , R2 +X2 0.097 + j0.686
Distribution line
R3 +X3 0.14 + j1.033
Load 1 8 + j1.885
Load Load 2 10 + j1.885
Load 3 5 + j1.885
 Application of a Parallel-Resonance-Type FCL for Maintaining the Recloser-Fuse Coordination in a Power Distribution System with a
Dispersed Generation
30th Power System Conference - 2015 Tehran, Iran

Fig. 4. Feeder 1 current (I1 ) in the absence of DG source. Fig. 6. DG current.

Fig. 5. Feeder 1 current (I1 ) in the presence of DG source.

Fig. 7. Fault current magnitude versus R.

Before addressing the recloser to fuse coordination
problem in presence of the DG source, the system condition
without it is investigated. Considering a 3-phase short circuit
fault from 0.4 s to 0.6 s at point P1 in Fig. 1, I1 is shown in
Fig. 4. It is seen that the recloser operates before F3 with its
resistor values for different standard values of capacitor,
which are adopted from [9], using MATLAB software.
Intersecting this plot with DG pre-fault currents value, values
of resistor and capacitor, and consequently inductor, can be
obtained [6]. In this case study, DG pre-fault currents value is
fast curve to clear the fault. After the predefined period of 0.2
s, recloser reconnects the feeder again and since the fault is
disappeared from the system, no further action will take place.
Now, the DG source will be connected to load 3. In this
condition, the DG will contribute to the fault current seen by
F3. Therefore, as it can be seen from Fig. 5, F3 operates
before the recloser. Thus load 3 is interrupted permanently for
this transient fault, which will cause several problems
including the decrease in reliability. Fig. 6 shows DGs current
for this condition.
To overcome this problem, a parallel-resonance-type fault
current limiter, which maintains the current contribution level
of the DG during the fault to its pre-fault value, is used to
connect the DG to the grid. For designing the suitable R, L, C
parameters of this FCL, the following procedure is used:
During fault condition, DGs current can be written as:
6 A. Fig. 7 shows  versus resistor values for different
values of capacitor. As it can be seen, there are three
intersections. However the intersection point with C = 1.5 mF
diagram has less value for resistor and thus poses less losses
during the fault to the system. So the values R = 0.6 , C =
1.5 mF and L = 470 H are chosen for the simulation. The dc
inductor of the FCL is taken to be 100 H.
Fig. 8 shows I1 for this system configuration. According to
this figure, the recloser operated before F3 with its fast curve.
Thus the coordination between recloser and fuse is restored.
DGs current is shown in fig. 9. It can be seen that it remained
constant during the fault.
Simulations are redone with a conventional resonance-type
fault current limiter to compare its performance with the
newer one. Since the dc inductor of the parallel-resonance
type FCL is 100 H, the inductor value of the resonance-type
FCL is set at the same value to impose the same conditions on
 =
V
(3) the system during normal operating mode. With this
assumption, considering (1), the value of capacitor should be
70 mF. Besides the economic issues concerning this design,
Considering (3), the parameters of the FCL can be derived by this FCL cannot restore the recloser to fuse coordination
equating DGs current during the fault with its pre-fault value. because of its slow speed to limit the DGs contribution to the
Since  has two unknown parameters (capacitor and fault current. Fig. 10 shows I1 and fig. 11 shows DGs current
inductor values are related based on (1)), (3) is plotted versus for this condition.

192
 Application of a Parallel-Resonance-Type FCL for Maintaining the Recloser-Fuse Coordination in a Power Distribution System with a
Dispersed Generation
30th Power System Conference - 2015 Tehran, Iran
Fig. 8. Feeder 1 current (I1 ) using the parallel-resonance-type FCL.
Fig. 9. DG current using the parallel-resonance-type FCL.
Fig. 10. Feeder 1 current (I1 ) using the resonance-type FCL with L = 100 H.
For a good limiting function of this FCL, value of the
inductor is increased to 10 mH which would result in C = 0.7
mF. Fig. 12 shows I1 and fig. 13 shows DGs current for these
new values of L and C. It can be seen that the maximum DGs
contribution to fault current is limited to 30 A and is decreased
to zero rapidly. Thus the FCL can properly limit the fault
current and restore the coordination between recloser and fuse
with these values for L and C. However, it still has some
major drawbacks. Because the 10 mF inductor is in the circuit
during normal condition, DGs current will be reduced in this
state, too. Note that in the parallel-resonance-type FCL the
100 H dc inductor is in the circuit during normal condition.
Thus it will not reduce DGs current in this state.
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Fig. 11. DG current using the resonance-type FCL with L = 100 H.
Fig. 12. Feeder 1 current (I1 ) using the resonance-type FCL with L = 10 mH.
Fig. 13. DG current using the resonance-type FCL with L = 10 mH.
Another weakness of this configuration can be understood
by comparing fig. 8 and fig. 12 with fig. 4. As it can be seen
from fig. 4, when the DG is not present in the network, the
recloser performs its fast trip at t = 0.472 s. When the DG is
introduced to the network and the parallel-resonance-type FCL
is used to limit its current during the fault, the recloser
performs its fast trip at t = 0.472 s again. But when using the
resonance-type FCL, the fast operation will take place at t =
0.575 s, which means that the fault will remain on the system
for a longer period. It is evident that the performance of
parallel-resonance-type FCL is better from this point of view,
too. Table II summarizes the comparisons made between the
system without DG, with DG and without FCL, the system
with DG and parallel-resonance-type FCL and the system with
DG and resonance-type FCL.
 Application of a Parallel-Resonance-Type FCL for Maintaining the Recloser-Fuse Coordination in a Power Distribution System with a
Dispersed Generation
30th Power System Conference - 2015 Tehran, Iran

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