Reliability Test of a Power System Containing High Voltage Circuit Breaker Under Different Operating Conditions

Abstract

High voltage circuit breakers are indispensable in any operational power transmission and distribution system, and hence the electric arc, being a crucial part of it, is equally important as well. However, the reliability is the key feature of a modern and smart power system. This paper presents a reliability test analysis of a power system that contains a high voltage circuit breaker. The arc produced by the circuit breaker under different fault conditions is simulated with a Black Box Model (Mayr Arc Model) in the Matlab/Simulink environment using the ARC BLOCKSET. The importance of Mayr Arc Model and the choice of using this specific method of modeling the arc phenomenon have also been justified in this paper. Using MATLAB’s design circuit as a control observation, five cases have been studied to examine the faults and malfunctions that this current system can handle. It is successfully shown that the entire system is extremely vulnerable to even a small change in impedance of the system when the arc has been produced. The data suggests that the plasma channel would become even more unstable if the change in line resistance is something as small as 1000 ohms.