Storing electrical energy, e.g. for mobile applications or to balance volatile, renewable generation systems, is becoming increasingly important. Batteries are often used for this purpose. For the safe operation of battery-electric systems, it is important to take arcing faults into account when developing and designing protection systems for battery systems.
For this reason, this study experimentally investigated the risk of arcing faults in battery systems with rated voltages of 0.1 kV up to 1.5 kV and short-circuit currents of 3 kA up to 12 kA. Firstly, the procedure for designing protection systems for battery electric systems is described. Based on this, the arc characteristics IkLB and PLB required for the design of the protection systems are derived. To investigate the influence of the battery systems parameters on the former mentioned arc characteristics, over 75 arc fault experiments were carried out on a box test set-up in accordance with IEC 61482-1-2 at NARC National Arc fault Research Center, Dresden, Germany. The nominal voltage Un, the short-circuit current Ik and the state of charge SOC were varied. The influence of the electrode distance aE was also analysed. The paper describes the test setup and the series of tests carried out. The influence of the method used to determine the short-circuit current on the arc characteristics is also analysed. The batteries technology used are sealed lead-acid batteries. The paper ends with a summary and an outlook.