A novel flux-weakening control strategy for permanent-magnet actuator of vacuum circuit breaker

摘要

Traditional vacuum circuit breaker (CB) equipped with a bistable permanent-magnet (PM) actuator suffers from the disadvantages of having long start-up time and large current peak, and these shortcomings are limiting its applications on synchronization operation and high-voltage switchgear. In this paper, a new drive circuit which can significantly weaken the flux of the holding force with the usage of an auxiliary capacitor is proposed. In the proposed circuit, a negative current is circulated in the respective coil when the PM actuator is ready to switch on or off. Cosimulation which integrates the PM actuator and the circuit is carried out with the Maxwell and Simplorer software. The prototype is tested on the platform in conjunction with a 10-kV PM vacuum CB (VCB) to showcase the success of the proposed flux-weakening control strategy.