VARC – A Cost-Effective Ultrafast DC Circuit Breaker Concept

A Contribution to the Development of High-Voltage dc Circuit Breaker Technologies: A Review of New Considerations

“…A recent development on the VARCCB reports a 2-8-ms breaking time and an interruption capability of up to 16 kA. Depending on the rated voltage, the VARCCB may also be a single unit or consist of the series connection of several individual units [49], [50].…”

“…It should be noted that the SSCBs can be regarded as pure semiconductor switches without using any mechanical switch, which have very short breaking times but come with high costs and conduction losses [49], [70]. Therefore, it is not considered a practical solution, especially in HV levels and is not discussed in this article.…”

“…Considering that there is still a large cost difference between the VARCCB and MP HCB solutions, more cost considerations on the requirements of on-state losses, systemstability constraints, dc CB-related parameter optimization, and control system complexity need to be further investigated [21], [75]. Also, the costand speed-related performances and criteria of dc CBs would change because of market situations and technology innovations, and the different dc CBs would be exposed to different risks, e.g., the possible failure of common switches in MP HCBs and the diverse difficulties during repeated fault interruption and reclosing [49], [82]. When system-wide coordinative protection and control are considered, the different issues among converter control, fault current limiters, and ac CB-/dc CB-based protective control during fault clearing and system recovery will be complicated and significant [24].…”

HVDC Circuit Breakers–A Review

“…A variety of current injection breaker, with a different injection circuit was used on the +/-160 kV Nan'ao system in China [7] and Mitsubishi have tested a 16 kA breaker [21]. An active resonant injection circuit has also been proposed, [40], [41], [42], [43]. This principle is shown in Fig.…”

Primary and backup fault detection techniques for multi‐terminal HVdc systems: a review

“…During a fault scenario, relative slow fault isolation response and capital cost are the main issues in dc‐CBs. For example, the dc‐CB proposed in [50], enables the ability to isolate fault within a few milliseconds. The conceptual designs of dc‐CBs based on switch technology are illustrated in Fig.…”