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RESEARCH

Design and Optimization of Power Electronic Interrupter in Medium Voltage Hybrid DC Circuit Breaker

Year: 2022 | Author: Jian Liu | Paper: T-S3.4
Hardware prototypes
Fig. 1. Designed PEI and comparison with IGBT modules.
  Circuit protection is a key enabler for future medium-voltage direct-current (MVDC) distribution systems. Hybrid dc circuit breaker (HCB) offers low conduction losses and reasonably fast response times, but suffers from large size. In this paper, a high power density power electronic interrupter (PEI) design is introduced in terms of single module design, turn-off strategy and whole system optimization.

  As an important part of HCB, PEI plays an important role of conduction and interruption of surge current. Although it is based on the series semiconductor devices, the design focus is quite different that of the normal power converters. In this paper, the design procedure based on a modular PEI concept is introduced and investigated. The surge current conduction and interruption tests are performed for the selected candidates. Two types of voltage clamping circuit, the single module design could be determined. In addition, the proposed staged turn-off strategy can improve the MOV energy balance and thus average their life time. The integration of nine modules demonstrates a very high power density of 7.4 kW/cm3. The experimental results validates the current interruption function of deigned PEI and HCB achieves at 6 kV dc bus.

  With good scalability, the PEI concept and the HCB architecture shows great potential in the MV dc distribution system and even higher voltage applications.
Experimental waveform
Fig. 2. Waveforms of PEI with three turn-off strategies.

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