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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 ...
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.
A residual-current device (RCD), residual-current circuit breaker (RCCB) or ground fault circuit interrupter (GFCI) [a] is an electrical safety device, more specifically a form of Earth-leakage circuit breaker, that interrupts an electrical circuit when the current passing through line and neutral conductors of a circuit is not equal (the term residual relating to the imbalance), therefore ...
While voltage and current on the protective earth conductor is usually fault current from a live wire, this is not always the case, thus there are situations in which an ELCB can nuisance trip. When an installation has two connections to Earth, a nearby high current lightning strike will cause a voltage gradient in the soil, presenting the ELCB ...
Due to the fault current restriction it is safer for gassy mines. [16] Since the earth leakage is restricted, leakage protection devices can be set to less than 750 mA. By comparison, in a solidly earthed system, earth fault current can be as much as the available short-circuit current.
Earth fault protection also requires current transformers and senses an imbalance in a three-phase circuit. Normally the three phase currents are in balance, i.e. roughly equal in magnitude. If one or two phases become connected to earth via a low impedance path, their magnitudes will increase dramatically, as will current imbalance.
Almost any fault would instead be a single-phase earth fault which does not produce a large fault current. The conductors between the generator and the first circuit breaker are even more important to protect against two- and three-phase faults because there is no breaker that can stop the fault current from the generator.