Abstract
We investigated the unbalanced characteristics of the superconducting fault current limiters (SFCLs) based on YBCO thin films with a single line-to-ground fault. When a single line-to-ground fault occurred, the short circuit current of a fault phase increased about 6 times of transport currents after the fault onset but was effectively limited to the designed current level within 2 ms by the resistance development of the SFCL. The fault currents of the sound phases almost did not change because of their direct grounding system. The unbalanced rates of a fault phase were distributed from 6.4 to 1.4. It was found that the unbalanced rates of currents were noticeably improved within one cycle after the fault onset. We calculated the zero phase currents for a single line-to-ground fault using the balanced component analysis. The positive sequence resistance was reduced remarkably right after the fault onset but eventually approached the balanced positive resistance component prior to the system fault. This means that the system reaches almost the three-phase balanced state in about 60 ms after the fault onset at the three-phase system.