POWER SYSTEM - III

7 Sem. B.Tech. EEE

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Prepared By: -
SOUMYA DEBASHIS DAS
Dept. of Electrical & Electronics Engineering
Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology, Odisha, Siddhi Vihar, Burla
Circuit Breaker
 It is defined as a switching device which can be operated manually or automatically for controlling and protecting
an electrical power system.
 It is a mechanical device, capable of making, carrying current for a specific duration and breaking currents during
abnormal conditions such as those of short circuits.

Principle

As soon as the plasma looses

Pair of Electric Contacts Contact Gap grows longer
its conductivity, arc
separates which is bridged by plasma
interruption process completes
Insulating Plasma
The functions of the plasma are: -
 It extinguishes the arc drawn between the contacts when the circuit breaker opens.
 It provides adequate insulation between the contacts and from each contact to earth.

How is Arc formed?

As soon as the contacts of the circuit breaker separates, a small arc is drawn between them and current continues to
flow until the next zero of the supply frequency current.

How is Arc formed?

If there is no arc, there won’t be any discharge across the circuit breaker contacts which will lead to direct
instantaneous action of circuit breaker to either close or open. This rapid interruption of an appreciable current
generates dangerous over-voltages according to the eqn;
V=-L , where L= Circuit Inductance and
 Arc Voltage: The voltage drop across an arc. Generally accounts for 3% of the rated voltage.
 Restriking Voltage: It may be defined as the voltage that appears across the breaking contact at the instant of arc
extinction.
 Recovery Voltage: It may be defined as the voltage that appears across the breaker contact after the complete removal
of transient oscillations and final extinction of arc has resulted in all the poles.
Methods of Arc Extinction

Arc Extinction

High Resistance
Low Resistance
Interruption
Interruption
(Low & Medium AC
(High AC CBs)
CBs and all DC CBs)

Lengthening of the
Cooling the Arc (by Constraining the Arc
Gap (by rapid Splitting the Arc (in Recovery Rate Energy Balance
conduction & (into a narrow
opening of contacts series) Theory Theory
absorption) channel)
of CB)
 Lengthening of Arc Splitting of Arc Cooling of Arc

Here the arc length between two contacts is Here the interruption of an arc is done through This phenomenon is
increased by using arc runners which are horn-like splitting the arc using arc splitters which are done by bringing the arc
blades of conducting material. Arc runners are specially made plates of resin fiberglass. in contact with cooled
connected to arcing contacts. The arc is initiated at These plates are placed on the perpendicular air. Due to cooling the
the bottom and blows upward due to path to arc so that it will be pulled towards it arc diameter reduces.
electromagnetic force. Because of this arc length by an electromagnetic force. So when arc gets This will increase its
increases and finally arc gets extinguished. pulled upward it gets elongated the split and resistance and thus the
cooled due to which it gets extinguished. arc gets extinguished
Energy Balance Theory
When the contact of circuit breaker are about to open, restriking voltage is zero, hence generated heat would be zero and
when the contacts are fully open there is infinite resistance this again make no production of heat. We can conclude from
this that the maximum generated heat is lying between these two cases and can be approximated, now this theory is based
on the fact that the rate of generation of heat between the contacts of circuit breaker is lower than the rate at which heat
between the contact is dissipated. Thus if it is possible to remove the generated heat by cooling, lengthening and splitting
the arc at a high rate the generation, arc can be extinguished.
Recovery Rate Theory
The arc is due to the ionization of the gap between the contact of the circuit breaker. Thus the resistance at the initial stage
is very small i.e. when the contact are closed and as the contact separates the resistance starts increasing. If we remove ions
at the initial stage either by recombining them into neutral molecules or inserting insulation at a rate faster than the rate of
ionization, the arc can be interrupted. The ionization at zero current depends on the voltages known as restriking voltage.
Let us define an expression for restriking voltage. For loss-less or ideal system we have;

Here, v = restriking voltage.

V = value of voltage at the instant
of interruption.
L and C are series inductor and
shunt capacitance up to fault point.
Thus, from above equation we can
see that lower the value of product
of L and C, higher the value of
restriking voltage.
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