Coordinated Resistive Superconducting Fault Current Limiting for Transmission-Line Current Differential Protection
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12928/biste.v8i5.17142Keywords:
R-SFCL, Current Differential Protection , Transmission-Line Protection, Fault-Current Limitation, High-Resistance FaultAbstract
High-resistance internal faults remain a challenging operating condition for transmission-line current differential protection because the resulting differential current may approach the relay sensitivity boundary, whereas severe through-current conditions impose stringent security requirements. This paper proposes a coordinated protection framework that integrates a resistive superconducting fault current limiter (R-SFCL) with current differential protection and evaluates the R-SFCL not only in terms of fault-current suppression, but also through its influence on the differential–restraint operating margin and high-resistance fault detectability. The proposed method couples an electrothermal R-SFCL model with synchronized terminal-current phasors and a deterministic search for the maximum detectable fault resistance. The protection performance is systematically evaluated for internal three-phase (ABC), three-phase-to-ground (ABG), phase-to-phase (AB), and single-phase-to-ground (AG) faults over aggregate R-SFCL resistances ranging from 5 to 100 Ω. Simulation results show that the R-SFCL reduces peak fault current by 31.0–41.3% while preserving dependable operation of the differential relay for all investigated internal faults under a 200-A pickup threshold and a 0.75 differential-restraint characteristic. Increasing the R-SFCL resistance also enhances high-resistance fault sensitivity. At 20 Ω, the maximum detectable fault resistances are 90, 89, 73, and 80 Ω for ABC, ABG, AB, and AG faults, respectively, increasing to limiting values of 90, 92, 73, and 83 Ω at 30 Ω or above. No further sensitivity improvement is observed beyond 30 Ω for any fault category, revealing a clear saturation in the protection benefit. These results identify an effective coordination region of 20–30 Ω, within which substantial fault-current limitation is achieved while retaining most of the attainable improvement in differential-protection sensitivity. The proposed framework therefore provides a quantitative basis for protection-aware R-SFCL sizing that balances fault-current mitigation, relay dependability, and high-resistance fault sensitivity.
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