Short-Circuit current equations on DC

When a short-circuit occurs across the terminals of a DC circuit, the current rises from the load
current (<In) to the short-circuit current Isc over a period of time that depends on the value of the
resistance R and inductance L of the short-circuited loop.

Fig.1Direct Cureent Circuit [1]

The equation determining the current in the loop is:

L di
U=i R+ +Ua [1]
dt

or

L di
=U i R Ua
dt

Where

U= the rated voltage of the supply source L is the inductance of the circuit
R= the resistance of the circuit

The curve of I versus time is defined (neglecting In) by the equation:

i=Isc ( 1 e t / t ) [1]
Where:

t= L/R is the time constant for the rise to Isc.

Practically speaking, after a time t = 3 t , the short-circuit is considered to be established,
because the value of e 3 = 0.05 is negligble compared to 1 (see the curve opposite).

Fig.2 I vs t curve [1]

The lower the time constant (e.g. battery circuit), the shorter the time required for the current to rise
to Isc.

To express breaking capacity, the interrupted short-circuit current with the following time constants
is used:

L/R = 5 ms, fast short-circuit

L/R = 15 ms, standardised value used in standard IEC 60947-2
L/R = 30 ms, slow short-circuit.
In general, the value of the system time constant is calculated under worst-case conditions, across
the terminals of the generator.
Loads modelling for Low Voltage DC microgrids

Standards describing component modeling and calculation methods are necessary in order to
analyze a power system. Available standards today for LV dc systems are IEEE Std. 399-1997 [45,
46] and IEC 61660 [47], which both cover load flow and short-circuit calculations of dc auxiliary
power systems.Loads in these standards are modeled as constant-resistance (CR), constant-
current (CC) or constant-power (CP) loads, depending on the load characteristic. These models are
adequate for load-flow calculations and simplified short-circuit calculations.[1]

Resistive Loads

U= ( Ro+ R 1 I ) I =Ro I + R 1 I 2 [3]

P=U I as a function of the voltage yields

PU =U ( Ro
2R1
+

U
+
Ro2
R 1 4 R 12 ) [3]

Line resistance

L
R= [6]
S

S=area
L=longitude
p=resistivity

Line Inductace

( (( )( ( ) )) ( ( )) )
2 2
2l d d u d
L=2 l ln 1+ 1+ 1+ 1+ + +
d 2l 2l 4 2l

Where:
l=longitude
d=diameter wire

SSCB Analysis

Once known the equations that describe a short circuit in DC for high voltage and low voltage can
be analyzed the solution to counteract the short circuits in the microgrids, one of the solutions is the
implementation of SSCB.

The SSCB should meet protection requirements for dc microgrids due to availability of
semiconductor devices capable of interrupting high fault currents within microseconds and switching
under 1 kHz for fault-current-limiting applications. Cost-effective commercial dc SSCBs are not yet
available,although many prospective topologies are presented in the literature [16-28].
Semiconductor devices usually used are: thyristors, insulated-gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs),
integrated gate - commutated thyristors (IGCTs), and gate turn-offthyristors (GTO). Wide-Band-Gap
(WBG) devices (i.e., mainly SiC or GaN devices) are the latest addition to SSCB applications.

To the circuit shown in Figure , the short-circuit current must be calculated as any circuit previously
shown, with the particularity that it has an IGCT which implies that we must calculate the maximum
current of the device for the activation of the protection SSCB, said current is calculated in the
following manner

Fig.3 ICGT [4]

Limiting load current

s di
U=i R s+ L +i Rload+ i ( RB IGCT )
dt

i ( RB IGCT )

Initially the limiting load current is calculated, because this is the one that drives the
SSCB block and avoids short-circuit, mathematically said current is described by
the integral shown in the following equation:

tp
2 2 I TSM 2 tp
I t= I T ( t ) dt= [5]
0 2

With reference to the limiting load current, we proceed to calculate the

characteristic parameters of IGCT

I T ( AV ) M =2
V T
2
+r T 2 P V T
[5]
rT 2

T vjmax Tc
P AVM = [5]
R th ( j c )
Threshhold Voltage

V T ( I T ) =V T 0 + I T r T [5]

References

[1]Circuit breakers for direct current applications Technical paper by ABB

[3]Modeling, Control and Protection of Low-Voltage DC Microgrids, Daniel
Salomonsson,Royal Institute of Technology School of Electrical Engineering
Electric Power Systems
[4] Short-Circuit Protection for Low-Voltage DC Microgrids Based on Solid-State Circuit
Breakers,Sharthak Munasib and Juan Carlos Balda,University of Arkansas
[5]APPlying IGCT ABB Application note 5SYA 2032-04
[6]3-phase short-circuit current (Isc) at any point within a LV installation
http://www.electricalinstallation.org/enwiki/3phase_shortcircuit_current_(Isc)_at_any_point_within_a_LV_installation