Thermal Design and Experimental Evaluation of a 1kV, 500A T-Type Modular DC Circuit Breaker

Abstract

This paper presents thermal design of a 1kV, 500A T-type modular DC circuit breaker. Along with the thermal design, which determines the trip/protection curve of the breaker, experimental results of the breaker are also presented in this paper. The breaker is over 99.5% efficient that is evaluated using both thermal measurements and millivolt meter for improving the accuracy of measurements. In addition, experimental results shows that T-breaker can break a fault current of up to 4.24 kA, which is approximately equal to 8.5 times its rated current.