Circuit Breaker Failure Protection Strategy for HVDC Grids

Abstract

HVDC grids demand the fast and reliable operation of the protection system. The failure of any protection element should initialize a backup protection almost immediately in order to assure the system’s stability. This paper proposes a novel backup strategy that covers the failure of the primary protection including the malfunctioning of the HVDC circuit breaker. Only local voltage measurements are employed in the proposed backup protection and the voltage derivative is calculated at both sides of the limiting inductor. Consequently, the speed and reliability of the protection system are enhanced, since no communication channel is needed. This paper contains a thorough specification of the proposed protection strategy. This strategy is validated in a four-terminal HVDC grid with various fault case scenarios, including high-resistance fault cases. The operation of the backup protection is reliable and remarkably fast.

Research on circuit breaker failure protection and the secondary accelerated fault isolation scheme of VSC-HVDC grids

“…This method has a complex protection criterion setting and high requirements for a protection action delay setting. Perez-Molina et al (2021) determines the failure state of the circuit breaker by detecting the voltage change rate at both ends of the upper limit current reactor of the DC line. When the circuit breaker fails and refuses to operate, the backup DC circuit breaker is tripped to isolate the fault.…”

Recent Trends in Power Systems Modeling and Analysis

“…In [7], a faulty section location method for resonant grounding systems is developed based on a dynamic time warping distance, which allows a faulty section in various fault conditions and, notably, in high-resistance faults to be located. A backup strategy for HVDC grid protection systems based on a Rate-Of-Change-Of-Voltage (ROCOV) algorithm is introduced in [8]; it relies exclusively on the local measurement of the voltage derivative, ensuring faster fault clearing compared to similar backup systems and eliminating the need for a communication channel.…”