Fault Current and Voltage Estimation Method in Symmetrical Monopolar MMC-based DC Grids

Symmetrical monopolar configuration is the prevailing scheme configuration for modular multilevel converter based high-voltage direct current(MMC-HVDC) links, in which severe DC overvoltage or overcurrent can be caused by the DC faults. To deal with the possible asymmetry in the DC faults and the coupling effects of the DC lines, this paper analyzes the DC fault characteristics based on the phase-mode transformation. First, the DC grid is decomposed into the common-mode and the differential-mode networks. The equivalent models of the MMCs and DC lines in the two networks are derived, respectively. Then, based on the state matrices, a unified numerical calculation method for the fault voltages and currents at the DC side is proposed. Compared with the time-domain simulations performed on PSCAD/EMTDC, the accuracy of the proposed method is validated. Last, the system parameter analysis shows that the grounding parameters play an important role in reducing the severity of the pole-to-ground faults, whereas the coupling effects of the DC lines should be considered when calculating the DC fault currents associated with the pole-to-pole faults.

Inverse-time Backup Protection Based on Unified Characteristic Equation for Distribution Networks with High Proportion of Distributed Generations

The setting work of backup protection using steady-state current is tedious,and mismatches occasionally occur due to the increased proportion of distributed generations(DGs)connected to the power grid.Thus,there is a practical need to study a backup protection technology that does not require step-by-step setting and can be adaptively coordinated.This paper proposes an action sequence adaptive to fault positions that uses only positive sequence fault component(PSFC)voltage.Considering the influence of DGs,the unified time dial setting can be obtained by selecting specific points.The protection performance is improved by using the adjacent upstream and downstream protections to meet the coordination time interval in the case of metallic faults at the near-and far-ends of the line.Finally,the expression and implementation scheme for inverse-time backup protection(ITBP)based on the unified characteristic equation is given.Simulation results show that this scheme can adapt to DG penetration scenarios and can realize the adaptive coordination of multi-level relays.

Open-circuit Fault Diagnosis of Traction Inverter Based on Compressed Sensing Theory

This study proposes a new method of fault diagnosis based on the least squares support vector machine with gradient information(G-LS-SVM)to solve the insulated-gate bipolar transistor(IGBT)open-circuit failure problem of the traction inverter in a catenary power supply system.First,a simulation model based on traction inverter topology is built,and various voltage fault signal waveforms are simulated based on the IGBT inverter open-circuit fault classification.Second,compressive sensing theory is used to sparsely represent the voltage fault signal and make it a fault signal.The new method has a high degree of sparseness and builds an overcomplete dictionary model containing the feature vectors of voltage fault signals based on a double sparse dictionary model to match the sparse signal characteristics.Finally,the space vector transform is used to represent the three-phase voltage scalar in the traction inverter as a composite quantity to reduce the redundancy of the fault signals and data-processing capabilities.A G-LS-SVM fault diagnosis model is then built to diagnose and identify the voltage fault signal feature vector in an overcomplete dictionary.The simulation results show that the accuracy of this method for various types of IGBT tube fault diagnosis is over 98.92%.Moreover,the G-LS-SVM model is robust and not affected by Gaussian white noise.

Application of new directional logic to improve DC side fault discrimination for high resistance faults in HVDC grids

This paper proposes a simple and fast way to determine the direction of a fault in a multi-terminal high voltage direct current(HVDC) grid by comparing the rate of change of voltage(ROCOV) values at either side of the di/dt limiting inductors at the line terminals. A local measurement based secure and fast protection method is implemented by supervising a basic ROCOV relay with a directional element. This directional information is also used to develop a slower communication based DC line protection scheme for detecting high resistance faults. The proposed protection scheme is applied to a multi-level modular converter based three-terminal HVDC grid and its security and sensitivity are evaluated through electromagnetic transient simulations. A methodology to set the protection thresholds considering the constraints imposed by the breaker technology and communication delays is also presented. With properly designed di/dt limiting inductors,the ability of clearing any DC transmission system fault before fault currents exceeds a given breaker capacity is demonstrated.