Applicability Analysis of a Multi-Filar Meander R-SFCL and an RSC-DCCB in an MMC-MTDC Grid

Abstract

modular multilevel converters (MMC)-based high voltage direct current (HVDC) topology is an effective solution to solve the power transmission demand between countries. However, the initial fault current can rise to several tens of kA within a few ms by capacitor discharge during a fault. This fault current can permanently damage the converter components and cables. Therefore, to increase the stability of the system, the protection of the DC system is very important. DC system protection methods include circuit breaker technologies and current limiting technologies. We have selected a circuit breaker with combined resonant current source (RCS) and a resistive superconducting fault current limiter (SFCL) as protection methods for the DC system. The RSC-DC circuit breaker has no conduction power losses by on-state voltage drop. Therefore, it can provide stable interruption compared to a solid-state DC circuit breaker. Since the resistive SFCL has a very fast response time, it can effectively limit the rapidly rising initial fault current. We wound the superconducting tape by the multi-filar meander method. This method can increase the length of the superconducting tape used and speed up the bubble diffusion during quenching. We modeled an MMC-HVDC grid, resistive SFCL, and RCS DC circuit breaker using PSCAD/EMTDC. In this paper, the interrupting and current limiting characteristics are discussed when the resistive SFCL and the RCS-DC circuit breaker proposed by us are connected to the MMC-based MTDC grid. In the simulation, the current limiting factor of resistive SFCL was up to about 58%. In addition, the combination of resistive SFCL and RCS-DC circuit breaker can shorten the interruption time when the fault occurs.