Bidirectional short-circuit current blocker for DC microgrid based on solid-state circuit breaker

Abstract

In order to solve the imminent problem in that the traditional protection strategy cannot meet time requirements, together with the fact that the rotational inertia of a DC microgrid is small and short-circuit fault develops rapidly, a bidirectional short-circuit current blocker (BSCCB) based on solid-state circuit breaker for a DC microgrid is proposed. Firstly, the bidirectional current blocking circuit structure is proposed based on the analysis of key components. Then, a top-level differential protection strategy is developed based on the aforementioned proposal. Finally, the performance of the blocking circuit is simulated and verified by experiments. The results show that the proposed method can block short-circuit current within 4 ms, and the response speed of the protection strategy is very fast compared with previous approaches. BSCCB also has reclosing, bidirectional blocking and energy releasing functions. The current blocker proposed in this paper can be reused multiple times and has a promising future in low-voltage DC microgrid application.