Bypass arm based DC fault isolation scheme for MMC-HVDC systems

Abstract

High voltage direct current transmission based on a modular multilevel converter (MMC-HVDC) is an effective method to solve the grid connection of the new energy. A DC fault is an issue that must be solved for MMC-HVDC. This paper proposes a protection scheme for HVDC converters to quickly suppress DC fault current without increasing the operation loss. By employing a bypass arm in conjunction with a switch-type zero-loss current limiter (SZCL), most of the DC current in the bridge arm flows through the bypass arm so the fault current of the power devices is reduced. There are a number of main advantages of this scheme. The fault isolation time can be greatly shortened, the cost of the system is effectively reduced, the steady-state operation loss of the system does not increase, the operation of the AC-grid can be maintained stably when a DC fault occurs, and the overcurrent impulse to the AC-grid is reduced. The proposed scheme is applicable to two-terminal systems and the DC grid, especially for faults at the converter outlet of the DC grid. Simulation results using PSCAD/EMTDC show the superiority of the proposed scheme when compared with other schemes and a comparison of the costs shows the feasibility of the proposed scheme in practical applications.