Protection of the MMCs of HVDC transmission systems against DC short-circuit faults

Abstract

This paper deals with the blocking of DC-fault current during DC cable short-circuit conditions in HVDC (High-Voltage DC) transmission systems utilizing Modular Multilevel Converters (MMCs), where a new SubModule (SM) topology circuit for the MMC is proposed. In this SM circuit, an additional Insulated-Gate Bipolar Translator (IGBT) is required to be connected at the output terminal of a conventional SM with a half-bridge structure, hereafter referred to as HBSM, where the anti-parallel diodes of additional IGBTs are used to block current from the grid to the DC-link side. Compared with the existing MMCs based on full-bridge (FB) SMs, the hybrid topologies of HBSM and FBSM, and the clamp-double SMs, the proposed topology offers a lower cost and lower power loss while the fault current blocking capability in the DC short-circuit conditions is still provided. The effectiveness of the proposed topology has been validated by simulation results obtained from a 300-kV 300-MW HVDC transmission system and experimental results from a down-scaled HVDC system in the laboratory.