Design Basis for Circuit breaker Making current:

Introduction:
When an abnormal condition occurs like sudden buildup of fault current due to short circuits,
then interruption of power supply or damage to the power system equipment’s takes place. This
necessitates faster, reliable, sensitive and selective protection system. Protection system must
possess four fundamental qualities i.e. sensitivity, selectivity, reliability and speed of operation.
In order to achieve above qualities in the power system, VCB with microprocessor-based relay is
incorporated in the system.

Selection of Rated Breaking Current capacity of circuit breaker:

When external short circuits, including three-phase short circuits, line-to-line, double line-earth
and line to earth faults takes place it shall be interrupted by VCB without causing any harm to it.
Considering two case studies of fault location.

Case – 1. When fault takes place at the downstream of breaker i.e. between VCB and
transmission line, fault current contribution can be calculated as below.
As the Wind turbine generator is induction generator, its fault current contribution will be very
small due to absence of excitation system i.e. 2 times of full load current and can be neglected.

Case – 2. When fault takes place at the upstream of breaker i.e. between transformer and VCB,
fault current contribution can be calculated as below.
As per IS 2026 (Part 5): 2011 section 3.2.2.4 table 2, if the short circuit apparent power of the
system is unknown then it shall be taken as 1000 MVA for 36 KV. Maximum fault current that can
be contributed by the short circuit will be 17.5 KA.

Case – 3. When fault takes place between wind turbine generator and transformer, fault
current contribution can be calculated as below. Considering transformer percentage impedance
6.5 %, short circuit current fed to the fault will be 29.6 KA, which will be reflected as 0.63 KA
flowing through the VCB.

From above three cases it can be seen that, maximum fault current to be interrupted by circuit
breaker is 17.5 KA. According to the fault current, rated breaking capacity of the VCB is selected
which is 25 KA.

Rated short-circuit making capacity = 2.38 X Rated breaking capacity

= 2.38 X 25
= 59.5 Kilo amps.
Considering wide range of X/R ratio’s
Rated short-circuit making capacity = 2.5 X Rated breaking capacity
= 2.5 X 25
= 62.5 Kilo amps.
i.e. Rating short-circuit making current – 62.5KA.