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.
All applications of power capacitors require the same basic protection objectives, including system short circuits between phases or to ground within the bank, and element overvoltages, caused by power system overvoltages or by the failure of other elements within the bank.
For all types of capacitor banks, protection against overvoltages that are caused by excessively high system voltage is generally provided by a high speed overvoltage relay connected to the substation bus voltage transformers. This relay trips the capacitor bank breaker or vacuum interrupter before capacitor damage can occur.
Relay protection of shunt capacitor banks requires some knowledge of the capabilities and limitations of the capacitor unit and associated electrical equipment including: individual capacitor unit, bank switching devices, fuses, voltage and current sensing devices.
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.
An individual fuse, externally mounted between the capacitor unit and the capacitor bank fuse bus, typically protects each capacitor unit. The capacitor unit can be designed for a relatively high voltage because the external fuse is capable of interrupting a high-voltage fault.