Research on the Influence of Different Electrode Materials on DC Arc Fault Detection Characteristics

Abstract

With the application and promotion of renewable energies such as photovoltaics and wind power, DC power distribution systems have become a hot spot in the electrical field. The increasing DC system capacity and the increasingly complex system circuits have greatly increased the probability of DC arc faults, which makes it necessary to detect arc faults in time. Most researches usually studied arc faults based on copper electrodes according to the standard UL1699B. However, various cable materials would be used for different scenarios in DC systems. The characteristics may cause new interference to DC fault arc detection. In this paper, DC arc fault current and voltage waveforms based on different electrode materials are obtained from the DC arc fault experiment platform. First, differences among arc fault currents based on different materials are analyzed and compared from the perspective of time domain. The reason for differences in arc fault phenomenon based on different materials are also discussed. Then, the wavelet transform method is used to find differences of arc fault detection characteristics which are compared from the perspective of time-frequency domain. Finally, the influence of different materials on DC arc fault detection characteristics is summarized and relevant suggestions are made, which can help make the arc fault detection strategy more universal and applicable.