The invention relates to an economic short-circuit current limiter optimal configuration method. The method comprises the following steps of: firstly, establishing an economic short-circuit current limiter mathematical model according to a basic idea that an economic short-circuit current limiter exerts the maximum short-circuit current limiting effect and enables the economic cost to be minimum on the premise of ensuring the effect; according to the model, minimum purchase cost of a current limiter is taken as an objective function; taking fault node short-circuit current limitation, non-fault node voltage constraint and maximum installation number constraint of the current limiter as constraint conditions, respectively carrying out power flow calculation and short-circuit calculation, selecting short-circuit current exceeding nodes and a current limiter starting branch, and using a calculation result for the next step of genetic algorithm solution; and finally, a traditional geneticalgorithm is utilized to solve the current limiter optimal configuration model function, and the solution of the function is the current limiter optimal configuration scheme with the minimum economiccost when the efficacy of the short-circuit current limiter is maximum.