• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
• /
• v.29 no.4
• /
• pp.54-60
• /
• 2014

This paper describes electric shock accidents on a 4.16 kV class circuit breaker for power plant. Electric shock accidents mostly involve damage of human life, in comparison with electrical fire, rate of human death tend to be higher in electric shock accidents. Specially, in a high voltage facilities rate of human death comprised about 43.7% by electric shock accidents. If electric shock accidents happen in a 4.16 kV class circuit breaker for power plant, then the power plant discontinue power production. Electric shock accidents in a power plant have a great ripple effect such as an electric power shortage. In this paper, we analyzed electric shock accidents on a 4.16 kV class circuit breaker for power plant. From the analysis results, we confirmed a cause of electric shock accidents on a 4.16 kV class circuit breaker, it happened by defect of interlock equipment or occurrence of breakdown between first feeder contactor and shielding plate. In order to reduce electric shock accidents on a 4.16 kV class circuit breaker, the power plant should consider improvement of interlock equipment and insulation of feeder contactor in circuit breaker.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
• /
• v.23 no.5
• /
• pp.299-304
• /
• 2018

An ideal circuit breaker should supply electric power to loads without losses in a conduction state and completely isolate the load from the power source by providing insulation strength in a break state. Fault current is relatively easy to break in an Alternating Current (AC) circuit breaker because the AC current becomes zero at every half cycle. However, fault current in DC circuit breaker (DCCB) should be reduced by generating a high arc voltage at the breaker contact point. Large fire may occur if the DCCB does not take sufficient arc voltage and allows the continuous flow of the arc fault current with high temperature. A semiconductor circuit breaker with a power electronic device has many advantages. These advantages include quick breaking time, lack of arc generation, and lower noise than mechanical circuit breakers. However, a large load capacity cannot be applied because of large conduction loss. An extinguishing technology of DCCB with polymeric positive temperature coefficient (PPTC) device is proposed and evaluated through experiments in this study to take advantage of low conduction loss of mechanical circuit breaker and arcless breaking characteristic of semiconductor devices.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Illuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers
• /
• v.25 no.2
• /
• pp.61-68
• /
• 2011

The circuit breaker of power distribution board is essential part for the protection of electrical disaster from load short, trouble of power system. For the normal operation of circuit breaker, trip coil of the circuit breaker can cut the mechanical contact of circuit breaker from the detection of power system troubles. This paper presents a design and experimental results of trip coil fault detection system for the real time monitoring of the circuit breaker. The designed system is consisted by the trip coil fault detector which is connected to the each circuit breaker and remote monitoring unit. The trip coil fault detector can detect the impedance and operating voltage of the trip coil, and the detected values are compared with the normal state. And the remote monitoring unit can be connected to the 32 channels of trip coil fault detectors by serial communication. From the designed system, the fault and normal states of the trip coil can be remotely monitored in real time. The designed system is verified by the practical circuit breaker of power distribution board. And the results shows the effectiveness of the designed system.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
• /
• v.17 no.4
• /
• pp.368-376
• /
• 2012

According to developed distributed generators, Solid State Circuit Breaker(SSCB) is essential for high power quality of DC Grid. In this paper, a simple and new structure of DC SSCB with a fast circuit breaker and fault current limiter is proposed. It can help to choice low specification of elements because of the limiting of fault current and achieve economic efficiency for minimizing auxiliary SCRs. Also all of SCRs have little switching loss because they operate under ZVS and ZCS. Through simulations and experiments of short-circuit fault, the performance characteristic of proposed circuit is verified and a guideline is so suggested that the DC SSCB is applied for a different DC grid using formulas.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
• /
• 2002.05a
• /
• pp.735-739
• /
• 2002

PTB(Power Transfer Breaker) is a device which incorporate the functions of ACB(Air Circuit Breaker) and ATS(Automatic Transfer Switch). ACB is a circuit breaker against overload and ATS is a switching device to transfer the load between two electric power sources. An existing PTB design based upon the 5 bar & cam mechanism has been regarded to be too complex and thus a simpler 4 bar mechanism with trigger lock is proposed. Experimentation and optimization of the trigger lock is presented.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
• /
• 2006.05a
• /
• pp.365-366
• /
• 2006

Hydraulic circuit breaker is the most popular type of electric power circuit breaker because of its superiority of operating performance and capacity. For the improvement of hydraulic circuit breaker's operating performance, it is very important to analyze its dynamic behavior characteristics. In this study, hydraulic circuit is modeled, analyzed and experimented. As a result, the experimental data agree well with the numerical ones, and the numerical results can be applied to the design and the improvement of hydraulic electric power circuit breaker.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
• /
• v.20 no.4
• /
• pp.369-374
• /
• 2015

The circuit breaker in an electric power system is not operated when the voltage in the circuit breaker is higher than the rated transient recovery voltage (TRV). The TRV of a circuit breaker is characterized by re-ignition of the arc between two poles and determined by the value of connecting impedance. In this study, we simulated the peak value of TRV in the AC filter of the circuit breaker. The suitability of TRV is assessed by capacitive current switching test conditions defined by the international guide IEC62271-100.

• KEPCO Journal on Electric Power and Energy
• /
• v.5 no.1
• /
• pp.11-15
• /
• 2019

Recently, the circuit-breaker rated voltage is getting higher as the transmission voltage increases. To increase the circuit-breaker rated voltage, a multi-break circuit-breaker which has two or more breakers in series is adopted. For multi-break circuit-breaker, a grading capacitor is used to mitigate the Transient Recovery Voltage(TRV) and control the voltage distribution across the individual interrupter units. However, all over the world, there are many failures such as mechanical damage, explosion due to insulation breakdown. Therefore, it is necessary to study the causes of failure and the new performance verification method. In this paper, we investigate the causes of dielectric breakdown of the grading capacitors in the KEPCO power system and propose the performance verification method.

• Journal of Power Electronics
• /
• v.17 no.1
• /
• pp.272-281
• /
• 2017

The DC circuit breaker is essential for supplying stable DC power with the advent of DC transmission/distribution and sensitive loads. Compared with mechanical circuit breakers, which must interrupt a very large fault current due to their slow breaking capability, a solid-state circuit breaker (SSCB) can quickly break a fault current almost within 1 [ms]. Thus, it can reduce the damage of an accident a lot more than mechanical circuit breakers. However, previous DC SSCBs cannot perform the operating duty, and are not economical because many SCR are required. Therefore, this paper proposes a new DC SSCB suitable for DC grids. It has a low semiconductor conduction loss, quick reclosing and rebreaking capabilities. As a result, it can perform the operating duties of reclosing and rebreaking. The proposed DC SSCB is designed and implemented so that it is suitable for home dc distribution at a rated power of 5 [kW] and a voltage of 380 [V]. The operating characteristics are confirmed by simulation and experimental results. In addition, this paper suggests design guidelines so that it can be applied to other DC grids. It is anticipated that the proposed DC SSCB may be utilized to design and realize many DC grid systems.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
• /
• v.25 no.6
• /
• pp.503-510
• /
• 2020

The importance of DC breakers as key protection equipment is increasing in accordance with growing concerns on MVDC distribution network systems without DC/AC conversion. Different from the situation in AC systems, no natural zero-crossing point exists in DC systems. Thus, DC breaker technology is more difficult than AC breaker technology. The solutions for DC breakers can be divided into three types: mechanical, power electronics, and hybrid. In this study, the operating principles of several topologies of hybrid circuit breakers and that of the proposed DC breaker are analyzed and simulated by sorting two types. The breakers are compared in terms of the type and number of semiconductors, volume, power loss, auxiliary components, isolation, and other aspects. The advantages and disadvantages of the breakers are also analyzed.