Simulation and Protection of Reignition Overvoltage in Wind Farm Considering Microscopic Dielectric Recovery Process of Vacuum Circuit Breaker

• Published in: Energies (Basel) Vol. 16; no. 4; p. 2070
• Main Authors: Pu, Ziheng, Liu, Hao, Wang, Yaoqiang, Yu, Xinyun, Wu, Tian
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.02.2023
• Subjects: Buildings and facilities; Control; Design and construction; Electric circuit-breakers; Electric fields; Mathematical models; microscopic dielectric; Overvoltage; overvoltage protection; reignition; Simulation; vacuum circuit breaker; wind farm; Wind farms; Wind power; China
• DOI: 10.3390/en16042070
• ISSN: 1996-1073

The high amplitude and steep overvoltage generated by the breaking of the vacuum circuit breaker in the wind farm damages the inter-turn insulation of the transformer. There is a certain difference between the simulation results of the traditional reignition model and the measured overvoltage. It is necessary to improve the simulation model to simulate the overvoltage condition of the transformer more accurately and then select appropriate overvoltage protection measures. In this paper, based on the physical process of dielectric recovery during the opening process of the vacuum circuit breaker, a model of dielectric strength recovery is built to simulate the arc reignition of the vacuum circuit breaker. The model was applied to compare the overvoltage protection effects of RC snubbers, surge arresters, and choke coils. The simulation results show that the overvoltage amplitude and reignition times calculated by the model proposed in this paper are closer to the measured values. Compared with the traditional linear curve reignition model, the accuracy was increased by 24% and 51.2%, respectively. The parameter value of RC snubbers, the connection mode of surge arresters, and the combination mode of choke coil have an influence on overvoltage suppression. Finally, a suitable suppression scheme is proposed by installing a combined arrester on the high-voltage side of the transformer and connecting a choke coil in series, which can limit the phase-to-ground voltage and the phase-to-phase voltage to 2.43 p.u and 3.24 p.u, respectively, and reduce the steepness from 157.2 kV/μs to 22.3 kV/μs.