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In an electric power system, a fault or fault current is any abnormal electric current. For example, a short circuit is a fault in which a live wire touches a neutral or ground wire. An open-circuit fault occurs if a circuit is interrupted by a failure of a current-carrying wire (phase or neutral) or a blown fuse or circuit breaker .
This allows calculation by an industrial customer of its internal fault levels within its plant. If the prospective short-circuit current from the utility source is very large compared to the customer's system size, an "infinite bus" is assumed, with zero effective internal impedance; the only limit to the prospective short-circuit current is ...
IEEE Std 1584-2018 (Guide for Performing Arc-Flash Hazard Calculations) is a standard of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers that provides a method of calculating the incident energy of arc flash event.
Since practical calculations involve a number of approximations and estimates, some judgment is required in applying the results of a short-circuit calculation to the selection of apparatus. [4] Making capacity i.e. maximum fault current , device can carry, if it is closed in to the fault should be considered.
A short circuit fault current can, within milliseconds, be thousands of times larger than the normal operating current of the system. [2] Damage from short circuits can be reduced or prevented by employing fuses, circuit breakers, or other overload protection, which disconnect the power in reaction to excessive current. Overload protection must ...
While the fault current from a distribution or transmission system can usually be calculated or estimated with precision, calculation of the earth grid resistance is more complicated. Difficulties in calculation arise from the extended and irregular shape of practical ground grids, and the varying resistivity of soil at different depths.
As an example of the energy released in an arc flash incident, in a single phase-to-phase fault on a 480 V system with 20,000 amps of fault current, the resulting power is 9.6 MW. If the fault lasts for 10 cycles at 60 Hz, the resulting energy would be 1.6 megajoules .
A schematic representation of long distance electric power transmission. From left to right: G=generator, U=step-up transformer, V=voltage at beginning of transmission line, Pt=power entering transmission line, I=current in wires, R=total resistance in wires, Pw=power lost in transmission line, Pe=power reaching the end of the transmission line, D=step-down transformer, C=consumers.