Capacitor Bank Overcurrent Protection Principle

What are the principles of shunt capacitor bank design for substation installation?

This paper reviews principles of shunt capacitor bank design for substation installation and basic protection techniques. The protection of shunt capacitor bank includes: a) protection against internal bank faults and faults that occur inside the capacitor unit; and, b) protection of the bank against system disturbances.

Do capacitor banks need to be protected against short circuits and earth faults?

In addition to the relay functions described above the capacitor banks needs to be protected against short circuits and earth faults. This is done with an ordinary two- or three-phase short circuit protection combined with an earth overcurrent relay. Reference // Protection Application Handbook by ABB

What is the purpose of capacitor bank protection?

The objective of the capacitor bank protection is to alarm on the failure of some minimum number of elements or units and trip on some higher number of failures. It is, of course, desirable to detect any element failure. II. ELEMENT AND UNIT FAILURES EXAMINED

What is the protection of shunt capacitor bank?

The protection of shunt capacitor bank includes: a) protection against internal bank faults and faults that occur inside the capacitor unit; and, b) protection of the bank against system disturbances. Section 2 of the paper describes the capacitor unit and how they are connected for different bank configurations.

How does a capacitor unbalance protection work?

The unbalance protection should coordinate with the individual capacitor unit fuses so that the fuses operate to isolate the faulty capacitor unit before the protection trips the whole bank. The alarm level is selected according to the first blown fuse giving an early warning of a potential bank failure.

Why is overcurrent protection provided on the line side of a bank?

For all the banks studied, it is assumed that overcurrent protection is provided on the line side of the bank for tripping in case of a phase-to-phase or phase-to-ground fault. The objective of the capacitor bank protection is to alarm on the failure of some minimum number of elements or units and trip on some higher number of failures.