A Novel Approach to Determine the Optimal Location of SFCL in Electric Power Grid to Improve Power System Stability

This paper presents a novel approach to determine the optimal location of a resistive superconducting fault current limiter (SFCL) for enhancing the transient stability of an electric power grid (EPG). To select the optimal location of the SFCL, the sensitivity analysis of the angular separation of the rotors of synchronous machines present in the power system is introduced. The optimal location of the SFCL in EPG is coordinated with the corresponding optimal resistive value to improve transient stability and low-frequency oscillation damping performance of the system. It is shown that the SFCL can have different impacts (positive and negative) in function of its location in the EPG when a fault occurs. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method, the IEEE benchmarked four-machine two-area test system is used to carry out several case studies. The results show that the optimal location of SFCL combined with its optimal resistive value reduces the angular separation of the rotors that improves effectively the system stability during a fault.