The line protection methods for high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission system in engineering applications are poor in sensitivity and reliability. In this paper, we introduce a new notion of energy, namely a particular AC energy, based on which a particular AC component protection scheme is proposed. The scheme is comprised of start-up criterion, fault identification criterion, and faulty pole identification criterion. The start-up criterion is based on the fact that particular AC component measured at both terminals increases rapidly when a fault occurs. The particular AC energy calculated by particular AC component at both terminals behaves differently in the face of an internal or external fault, and this characteristic is applied to construct the fault identification criterion. The particular AC energy on the non-fault line is smaller than that on the faulty line, which can be used to establish the faulty pole identification criterion. Compared with other energy-based protections, the proposed method does not require data synchronization and is not affected by the distributed capacitive current of the transmission line. Comprehensive simulation experiments including real-time digital simulator (RTDS) tests indicate that this method is able to operate reliably under various fault conditions with satisfactory accuracy and high sensitivity.