Study of recovery characteristics of 2nd generation HTS tapes with different stabilizers for resistive type superconducting fault current limiters

Highlights: • Three methods of measuring the recovery time of HTS tapes are compared. • Four tapes with different stabilizers were tested to compare their recovery characteristics. • The HTS tapes with thinner stabilizers have better recovery characteristics. • Encapsulation makes the recovery characteristics of HTS tapes worse. • The results can be reference of the re-reclosed operation time interval. - Abstract: The resistive type superconducting fault current limiter (SFCL) is one of the most important superconducting power applications nowadays. As known, this type of SFCL is settled directly in the power transmission line. When a short fault happens, the temperature of the superconductors in the SFCL will increase sharply due to the huge generated heat. This means the superconductors need time to recover the superconducting properties and be ready for the next short fault. So the recovery characteristics become one of the most crucial features of the resistive type SFCL. In this paper, several different kinds of measuring methods are presented to calculate the recovery time of the HTS tapes, and comparison of these methods is also carried out by a standard test. On basis of this, samples with different kinds of stabilizers are used to explore the influence of stabilizer on their recovery characteristics. In addition, the influence of the encapsulation technology is also discussed in this paper.