In today's troubled climate, the utilities sector is in the midst of unprecedented transformation. Several factors are driving fundamental change: liberalization and increased competition, strategic mergers and acquisitions, regulatory pressure around climate change, systems reliability, convergence, electricity and renewable concerns.
Most rural medium-voltage networks are configured with the primary feeder protected by a circuit breaker or automatic circuit recloser (ACR), whilst the lateral line is protected by a fuse. When a fault occurs on the lateral line, the fuse operates to clear the fault. The problem with this is that the fuse blows on all faults, causing downstream customers to lose power and requiring a line crew to replace the fuse. In most cases, this sustained outage is unnecessary as the fault is transient - a momentary outage is sufficient to clear the fault.
Source: www.ngusummitna.com
