A new type of fault current limiter (FCL) based on triggered vacuum switch (TVS) is proposed in this paper. The TVSbased FCL (TFCL) is mainly composed of a capacitor, a current-limiting reactor connected with a capacitor in series and a TVS connected with a capacitor in parallel. With the TVS at off or on state, the whole TFCL behaves as a conventional series compensator or a fault current limiter, respectively. Numerical simulation and prototype experiment based on LC resonant test circuit show that it is feasible to develop TFCL.