Enhancing reliability of energy absorbers in DC circuit breakers

Mario Zaja, Dragan Jovcic

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingPublished conference contribution

2 Citations (Scopus)
5 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Because of high energy absorption requirements, the energy absorbers in DC circuit breakers will consist of a large number of series- and parallel-connected surge arrester units. This study shows that owing to highly nonlinear I-V characteristic of surge arresters, the failure of a single arrester has a significant impact on the performance of the whole energy absorber. In particular, the arrester column containing the failed unit will draw considerably higher current compared to healthy columns which may lead to cascaded failure of arresters and destruction of the whole column. This paper evaluates and proposes new connection topologies for enhancing the robustness and reliability of energy absorbers in high-voltage DC circuit breakers. A matrix structure is proposed as the topology for the greatest reliability. The impact of the number of breaker modules is also investigated.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication2020 IEEE Power and Energy Society General Meeting, PESGM 2020
PublisherIEEE Computer Society
Number of pages5
ISBN (Electronic)9781728155081
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2 Aug 2020
Event2020 IEEE Power and Energy Society General Meeting, PESGM 2020 - Montreal, Canada
Duration: 2 Aug 20206 Aug 2020

Conference

Conference2020 IEEE Power and Energy Society General Meeting, PESGM 2020
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityMontreal
Period2/08/206/08/20

Bibliographical note

This work was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research
and innovation program under grant No. 691714.

Keywords

  • Component failure
  • DC circuit breaker
  • DC grid protection
  • Energy absorber
  • Surge arrester

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