Initial firing angle control of parallel multi-pulse thyristor dual converter for urban railway power substations

Abstract

This paper presents an optimal initial firing angle control based on the energy consumption and regenerative energy of a parallel multi-pulse thyristor dual converter for urban railway power substations. To prevent short circuiting the thyristor dual converter, a hysteresis band for maintaining a zero-current discontinuous section (ZCDS) is essential during mode changes. During conversion from the ZCDS to forward or reverse mode, the DC trolley voltage can be stabilized by selecting the optimal initial firing angle without an overshoot and slow response. However, the optimal initial firing angle is different depending on the line impedance of each converter. Therefore, the control algorithm for tracking the optimal initial firing angle is proposed to eliminate the overshoot and slow response of DC trolley voltage. Simulations and experiments show that the proposed algorithm yields the fastest DC voltage control performance in the transient state by tracking the optimal firing angle.