• Bonnard, Charles-Henri

Abstract

Superconducting fault current limiters (SFCL) are a promising technology for power systems, i.e. they provide efficient current limitation from the very beginning of the fault without requiring any control system. In fact, the current limiting characteristics are directly connected to the physical properties of superconducting materials. There is a need for accurate models to help designing resistive-type SFCLs (rSFCL) and planning their integration into electrical networks. Such models have to take into account the physics involved for simulating (as accurately as possible) the electrical and thermal behaviours for a wide range of fault conditions, i.e. high and low short-circuit currents that can be of various durations. It is difficult to see how the planning and integration of SFCLs can be realized without using numerical tools, especially tools that allow realizing power system transient simulations, such as EMTP-RV. In fact, such software packages support engineers in predicting the behaviour of SFCLs in realistic network conditions, which may comprise a wide variety of overcurrent or fault situations. However, rSFCLs exhibit highly non-linear behaviours with a strong coupling between thermal and electrical phenomena. The implementation of such a model in power systems simulation tools is therefore challenging. Although some models have been already developed over the years, improvements are needed to take into account i) all the phenomena linked to the current limitation (electrical and thermal), ii) geometric properties of superconducting tapes that are used in rSFCLs, and iii) the possibility to perform simulations at the system level, and iv) the influence of the tape architecture in relationship to local phenomena (hot spots). This thesis hence focuses on the development of a models for resistive-type SFCLs based on second generation high temperature superconducting coated conductors (2G HTS CCs), i.e. (RE)BCO tapes. The models are implemented in EMTP-RV, a tool that is used by many utilities around the world. However, the modeling technique can be adapted to other simulation tools as well. The model proposed in this thesis is based on an electro-thermal analogy, which allows modeling thermal effects with non-linear electrical circuit elements such as resistors and capacitors. The model has been developed with the aim of providing flexibility. Hence, it can be used with an AC or DC excitation, and can also take into account non-uniformity in critical critical current density typically observed along length of the conductors (i.e. tapes). It also allows modeling virtually any tape architecture using modular and flexible electrical and thermal basic building blocks that can be different in size. This in turn also allows modeling SFCLs with different level of discretization, i.e. from hot spot modeling with local heat transfer to several meters of (RE)BCO tape. It therefore becomes possible to analyze in the same simulation phenomena happening at the sub-millimetric scale, such as hot-spot phenomena, and at the system-scale, such as the impact on the network of several hundred meters of superconducting tape. In order to validate the EMTP-RV circuit model, comparisons with results obtained with finite elements have been carried out. A similar behavior could be observed, as long as the discretization size of the electro-thermal elements were appropriate. The EMTP-RV circuit model allows performing optimizations of the tape architecture for various thicknesses of stabilizer, in presence or not of an interfacial resistance layer, e.g. between the superconductor and the substrate. While the circuit model was developed to allow representing heat transfer and current distribution in 3D, simulations are still limited to 2D cases because the size of the nodal matrix is otherwise exceeded in EMTP-RV. Simulation results also show that neglecting heat transfer along the thickness of the tape can be risky, [...]

Topics

• density
• impedance spectroscopy
• simulation
• current density
• interfacial