The discovery of high critical temperature materials in 1986 has created numerous potential applications. With the ever increasing demand for electrical power, the superconducting fault CUITent limiter are expected to pro vide an effective protection against large momentary CUITent spikes caused by short circuits or lightning. This application of superconductivity is one of the most attractive because it's an innovative device without any convention al equivalence. The aim of this work was in a first time to analyse each three different states of a sintered bismuth bulk samples and, in a second time to build a prototype of 100 A - 1 kV : "Aster". Namely, there is a very lox electric field due to a. c. losses wh en the CUITent is below the critical one. During a short circuit, the materials quench toward the nonnal state. The transition is in two steep : the materials is first in a dissipative state before to reach the nonnal state when is temperature is over the critical one. After isolating the limiter from the networks, the superconductor recovers. The test of the apparatus under 500 V and 1 kV has been successful and has shown the correct operating of the prototype.
