Abstract
The ever increasing electric power demand and the advent of renewable energy sources have revived the interest in high-voltage direct current (HVDC) multi-terminal networks. However, the absence of a suitable circuit breaker or fault tolerant VSC station topologies with the required characteristics (such as operating speed) have, until recently, been an obstacle in the development of large scale multi-terminal networks for HVDC. This paper presents a hybrid HVDC circuit breaker concept which is capable of meeting the requirements of HVDC networks. Simulation results are presented which are validated by experimental results taken from a 2.5kV, 700A rated laboratory prototype.
Highlights
The interest in high-voltage direct current (HVDC) multi-terminal systems has been revived in recent years
The acceptance of HVDC networks with respect to efficiency, reliability, and controllability will strongly depend on the availability of HVDC circuit breakers and fault tolerant voltage source converter (VSC) topologies making them both important enabling technologies [8,9,10,11]
In 2011, a hybrid circuit breaker solution was demonstrated at CIGRE, Bologna [12]. This topology can be considered as an updated version of that considered in [13], i.e. a low voltage (LV) branch consisting of ultra-fast mechanical switch and an insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) is introduced to carry the nominal current and avoid the high steady-state losses
Summary
The interest in HVDC multi-terminal systems has been revived in recent years. The ever increasing demand for electric power and the advent of renewable energy sources such as off-shore wind power [1] – [3] and solar thermal generation in deserts [4] require an electric transmission system that bridges very long distances with low losses. In 2011, a hybrid circuit breaker solution was demonstrated at CIGRE, Bologna [12] This topology can be considered as an updated version of that considered in [13], i.e. a low voltage (LV) branch consisting of ultra-fast mechanical switch and an insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) is introduced to carry the nominal current and avoid the high steady-state losses. This paper presents an alternative hybrid HVDC circuit breaker topology based on [16] This topology has a fast response time, enabling its use with state of the art switching hardware and it utilises self-powered gate drives in the high voltage branch, eliminating the need for external gate power supplies for the circuit breaker. The surge arrester, AM, is used to clamp the voltage across the commutating switch at a safe level, it generates a driving voltage for the current pulse required for the “self-powered” gate drive circuits of the auxiliary branch
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