The failure of commutation will cause the abrupt change of the operating parameters of the DC system. In this paper, the mechanism and physical process of commutation failure are analyzed. In view of the changing characteristics of inverter side valve current and DC current in the case of commutation failure, two kinds of S transform entropy are introduced into the detection of commutation failure of DC system in combination with S transform entropy’s excellent signal change feature recognition ability. In addition, the detection performance of the two s-transform entropies is fully considered in the case of no commutation failure, critical commutation failure and commutation failure. The simulation results based on PSCAD/EMTDC preliminarily verify the validity and accuracy of the two kinds of S transform entropy in dc system fault detection, which provides a basis for the further application of S transform entropy in dc system fault detection field.