Powerful nanographite fault current limiter for smart grid.

This article proposes the principally new type of fault current limiter-the contactless nanographite current limiter (CNGCL). The device works like a superconductor. At some critical value of the current, it abruptly falls to zero, at which point the resistance jumps up to 6 orders of magnitude. So far, the critical current is small about a few hundreds of mA. It is shown that an increase in the length of the contact pads up to 1 m will raise the switching current up to 1 kA, while the power dissipated by the CNGCL will be about 100 kW. The possibility of heat removal using water cooling using a chiller of appropriate capacity is being considered. The analysis shows that these measures will make it possible to create a competitive current limiter for smart grids based on CNGCLs.