Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
I. INTRODUCTION
Fig.1. pattern of inrush current
A demand of electric power is increasing due to industrial and
mankind growth rapidly. Therefore to fulfill the requirement of Electrical power is unable to generate during night time. As a
Electric power, apart from the conventional source of energy, the result, solar power plant auxiliaries draw the certain amount of
renewable source of energy is being more popular compared to current and solar plant behaves like a load. Therefore, in
other renewable sources of energy. Growth of solar power uninstructed manner, plant(s) have been disconnected from main
installation has been linearly increased and became key player grid by power plant operators. Next day when plant is connected
for produce of electricity. Total installed capacity of solar power to grid through transformer high amount of magnetizing current
in India 5130 MW and Gujarat state is 1024.15 MW up to the till (Im) drawn by the transformer due to residual flux of transformer.
date [1]. As a result, grid tied transformer of solar plant experiences the
Solar power plants are switched off at night due to some heavy amount of inrush current which becomes daily practice for
problems such as reverse power flow and reactive power solar power generation. To prevent from such an undesirable
compensation problem. Next day, at early morning, when solar phenomenon, certain techniques has been developed, however
plant is switched on in case of grid tide, due to switching effect, rigorous research is required in this area. To reduce inrush
high value of inrush current is drawn by transformer due to current, different techniques such as series compensation
instantaneous switching effects. Also transformer draws high techniques, virtual air gap techniques, asymmetric winding, pre
amount of current when it converts its state from de-energized to fluxing, optimal losing, point on wave switching, ultra-low
energized state which measured as inrush current which should power frequency power source, bridge type inrush current
be mitigate effectively to overcome the power quality issues. limiter, grounding resistance at neutral point and sequential
Amount of inrush current is 8 to 10 times higher than rated switching method are discussed in this paper. From above
current [2]. discussed methods, Sequential switching method is adopted to
During starting, amount of high inrush current for several reduce the inrush current.
cycles has been fed to grid. But it slowly decreases and finally
reaches at normal rated current which is shown in Fig. 1.
Point on wave switching method Transformer inrush currents are generates high magnitude
amount harmonic rich currents at the instant of transformer
energization. Inrush currents are categorized in three types [30].
Ultra low frequency power source Table IV shows the rating of transformer specially used for solar
power plant.
Fig. 2. Methods of inrush current reduction 1. Energization inrush current: During Energization of
A concept of virtual air gap method is use of virtual air gap transformer, energized inrush current is result of re-energized
which equal thickness differs in function of controllable limits transformer due to residual flux is can be zero or depending on
changed to the alignment of magnetic circuit and the related de-energization time of transformer.
control system. The AGW (air gap windings) current is either set 2. Recovery inrush current: Recovery inrush current is flow
to a definite value using a current sensor or external source, in through transformer when supply voltage is restored after having
the main magnetization winding of the magnetic circuit [14]. By been reduced by system disturbances.
using controlled switching or optimal closing method required 3. Sympathetic inrush current: Sympathetic inrush current
the calculation of residual flux in core of transformer at de- occurs in transformer when multiple transformers are connected
energization instant. In this method to minimize the inrush in system and one of them is energized.
current not required the independent pole circuit breaker but it
required the calculation of residual flux of transformer [15] [16]. Power transformer of 11/66 kV, 20MVA has been simulated for
Series compensator technique is an inverter-based series the given switching instant, normal inrush, recovery inrush and
compensator which is comprised of a single-phase inverter and sympathetic inrush current difference has been achieved by
series transformer. This technique is easy to implement because suitable modelling in Matlab/ Simulink environment which are
it does not requires information about the parameters of
shown in Fig. 3(a), 3(b) and 3(c).
Simulated results which reflects the difference between By analyzing the simulated result of energization inrush
normal inrush current, recovery inrush current and sympathetic current in Fig. 4(a) show the inrush current peak is more than
inrush currents of transformer are as shown in Fig. 4(a), 4(b) and 1500A. Harmonics content and THD generated due to
4(c). energization inrush current shown in Table V.
[6] Neves, W, Fernandes, D, Baltar, F, Rosentino, A, Saraiva, E, Delaiba, [22] Seyed Majid Madania, Mehrdad Rostamia, G.B. Gharehpetianb, Reza
A, Guimaraes, R, Lynce, M & de Oliveira, J 2011, A comparative Hagh Maram Improved bridge type inrush current limiter for
investigation of electromechanical stress on transformers caused by primary grounded transformers Electric Power Systems Research ,
inrush and short-circuited currents, International conference on vol.95, pp. 1 8, feb.2013.
electrical power quality and utilisation (EPQU), 2011, Libson, 17-19 [23] Yu Cui, Sami G. Abdulsalam, Shiuming Chen, Wilsun Xu, A
October 2011. Sequential Phase Energization Technique for Transformer Inrush
[7] Faiz, J., Ebrahimi, B.M., Abu-Elhaija, W. Computation of static and Current Reduction Part I: Simulation and Experimental Results
dynamic axial and radial forces on power transformer windings due to IEEE transactions on power delivery, vol. 20, no. 2, April 2005.
inrush and short circuit currents Applied Electrical Engineering and [24] Yu Cui, Sami G. Abdulsalam, Shiuming Chen, Wilsun Xu, A
Computing Technologies (AEECT), 2011 IEEE Conference, Jordan, Sequential Phase Energization Technique for Transformer Inrush
2011. Current ReductionPart II: Theoretical Analysis and Design Guide
[8] Fahrudin Mekic, Ramsis Girgis, Zoran Gajic, Ed teNyenhuis Power IEEE transactions on power delivery, vol. 20, no. 2, April 2005.
Transformer Characteristics and Their Effect on Protective Relays [25] D.I.Taylor, N.Fischer, J. D. Law, and B. K. Johnson, Using Lab-
33rd Western Protective Relay Conference, October 17-19, 2006. VIEW to measure transformer residual flux for inrush current
[9] Y.G. paithankar and S.R. bhide fundamental of power system reduction, presented at the North Amer. Power Symp., Starkville,
protection PHI Pvt. Ltd, 2003. MS, Oct. 46, 2009.
[10] S.V.kulkarni and S.A.kharpade Transformer engineering design and [26] Douglas I. Taylor, Joseph D. Law, Brian K. Johnson, and Normann
practice MARCEL DEKKER, INC. 2004. Fischer, Single phase transformer inrush current reduction using
prefluxing IEEE Transactions On Power Delivery, Vol. 27, No. 1,
January 2012.
[27] Douglos I. taylor system apparatus, and method for reducing inrush
current in a three phase transformer united states patent, patent no.
US 8,878,391 B2, date: nov, 4, 2014.
[28] V. Oiring de Castro Cezar, L-L. Rouve, J-L. Coulomb, F-X.
Zgainski, O. Chadebec, and B. Caillault Elimination of inrush
current using a new prefluxing method. Application to a single-phase
transformerIEEE, 2014.
[29] Vaddeboina, V, Taylor, G & Proudfoot, C 2012, Switching large
transformers on weak transmission netroks A real time case study,
Universities power engineering conference 2012, 47th international
conference, , IEEE, London, pp. 1-6, 4-7 September 2012.
[30] Patel Jatinkumar, Gupta, S.P. and Singh, S.P Comparison of Control
Techniques for rotor current control of Line-Excited Slip-ring IG for
WECS International Conference on Computational Intelligence and
Communication Networks, IEEE, 2010.