Converter Protection

Over voltages in converter station:

• Types of over voltages:
– Lightning over voltages
• Occurs due to lightning strokes
• Appear very short duration
• More severe
– Switching over voltages
• Occur due to Resonant effects, line energization
• Appear short duration
• severe
– Temporary over voltages
• Occur due to Load rejection, ground faults.
• Appear long duration
• Less severe
• The over voltages in a converter station are caused by the following:
– Disturbances originating from AC side
– Disturbances originating from DC side
– Internal faults in the converter
 Cont..
• Disturbances originating from AC side
– Lightning strokes produced in the AC system, are passed
through the converter transformer and appears as a
lightning over voltages across the converter.
– The initiation and clearing of the faults in the AC systems,
result switching surges or temporary over voltages.
– Energisation of the converter transformer can cause high
over voltage(1.6 P.U) due to inrush magnetizing currents.
– The voltage is also distorted due to even harmonics.
– The temporary over voltages due to load rejection can be
quite serious for converter stations connected to weak
AC systems.
 Cont..
• Disturbances originating from DC side
• Lightning strokes produced in the DC line, are passed through the
smoothing reactor and appears as a lightning over voltages across
the converter.
• The switching surges of the converter are also caused by the ground
faults on a pole of a bipolar dc link.
• The switching of the DC filter branches, parallel connection of poles
can cause transient currents or temporary over voltages , which will
mainly stress the neutral bus and filter reactors.
– Due to the capacitive and inductive coupling between bridges,
the surges can also occur on healthy pole.
• The over voltages can also arise from the oscillations of current and
voltage in the line caused
– by sudden jumps in the converter voltage due to the
commutation failure or other converter faults.
– Injection of AC voltage of fundamental frequency and 2nd
harmonic.
 Cont..
• Over voltages caused by the internal disturbances
• Transient over voltages are produced by the internal
converter faults, such as ground fault at the valve side of the
smoothing reactor.
• Ground faults can also produce switching surges
– A fault between the valve bridge and the converter transformer.
• The firing of the bypass pairs or closing of the bypass switch
across one converter generates over voltages across the
remaining converters.
• The energisation of the DC line from the rectifier side with
remote terminal blocked can cause high OVER VOLTAGES at
the inverter which is open ended.
• The series connection of the thyristors and spread in the
delay turn-on times of thyristors results OVER VOLTAGEs
across the during turn-on.
Over currents in a converter station:
• The faults producing over currents are classified in to three types:
– Internal faults
• Cause high currents
• Occur very infrequent
• The thyristor surge current ratings must be choose to withstand these
over currents.
– Line faults
• Cause over currents are in the range of 2 to 3 p.u
• Occur frequently
• Controlled by the current control
– Commutation failures at the inverter
• Cause very small currents
• May be occur quite frequent.
• Controlled by the current control
• In case 1, normal operation may commence only after the inspection of the
valves to check for damages
• In case 2&3, normal operation can commence only after fault clearing.
Protection of HVDC systems :
• Protection of AC systems is usually divided in to two principal
categories:
– Over voltage protection: accomplished by protective gaps, lightning
arrestors and over shield wires
– Over current protection: accomplished by fuses, C.Bs, protective relays and
current limiting reactors.
• Protection of DC systems may be divided in to four categories:
– Over voltage protection is accomplished similarly to that of an AC systems,
although some differences
– Over current protection accomplished by GRID control of the valves.
– Damper circuits
– DC breakers
• Expect to over voltage protection, protection of HVDC systems is
entirely different from protection of HCAC systems.
Protection against over voltages:
• The basic principals of over voltage protection is the same as
in DC systems as in the AC systems:
– The over voltage stresses in the equipment with non self restoring
insulation must be limited at all times by providing surge arresters.
• The protection level of arrestors must be lower than the B.D voltage of
the insulation
– Self restoring insulation such as air may be allowed to breakdown,
where there is no danger to the safety of the personnel.
– The operation of the surge arrestors or flashover the insulation
must not be frequent.
• Protective level of arrestors must be lower than the max operating
voltage in the system.
– There must be proper co-ordination of the insulation and over
voltage protection in different parts of the system, taking into the
account the characteristics of the insulation, the nature of over
voltage
 Cont..
• The over voltages generated on the AC side
should as for as possible, limited by the surge
arrestors on the AC side.
• The over voltages generated on the DC side,
must be limited by DC line, DC bus and neutral
bus arrestors.
• The critical components in the converter
station such as valves are directly protected by
arrestors connected closed to the components.
 Cont..
• For a system with two 12 pulse converters per pole,
there are about 40 arrestors per pole.
• The arrestors are selected with adequate energy
dissipation capability which vary with the location of
the arrestors.
• The closing of a bypass valve across a converter results
in increasing the DC voltage across the remaining
converter. The converter unit arrestor is stressed in such
cases.
• The protective firing of a valve is the back-up protection
that is available for over voltages in the forward
direction.
Surge arrestor:
• A lightning arrester is a device used on electrical
power systems to protect the insulation on the system
from the damaging effect of lightning.
• Surge arrestors are normally connected across the
equipment to be protected against the overvoltages.
• Surge arrestor diverts the lightning (or) switching
surges from the equipment towards ground.
• In the stages of application of dc technology, surge
arrestors were not available, the valves were protected
by the spark gaps connected across them.
• Later with the development of surge arrestor, it was
possible to extinguish the arrestor current with out
exceeding the protective level.
• Surge arrestor were made up of nonlinear resistors are
connected in series with the spark gaps.
Principle of operation:
• Under normal operating voltage, the impedance offered
by the surge arrestor is very high. Hence the current flow
through the a low resistance path, equipment can
perform its normal function.
• When an overvoltage takes place, its causes drop in the
impedance of the surge arrestor. Thus, the current now
will flow through surge arrestor rather than the main
path i.e. electrical equipment.
• Thus, it can be said that surge arrestor offers high
impedance to low voltage surges(i.e. for L-G fault) & low
impedance to high voltage surge(i.e. for surge voltage or
lightning).
• Surge arrester offer high resistance again after surge.
 Cont…
• Surge arrestor should have the following properties:
– Arrestors should have accurate protective characteristic, i.e. below
voltage withstand capability of protective equipment.
– It should have enough ability discharge the current surge and
dissipate the energy in the surge causing no effect on the protective
characteristic.
– The material should be stable during discharge and after discharge.
• Types of surge arrestors:
– Metal oxide(MO) arrestors.
• MO arrestors primarily comprising of zinc oxide(ZNO), but
containing a number of other metal oxides (such as Bi2o3, sb2o3,
mno2, cr2o3), as additives.
• Also called as zinc oxide surge arrestor.
• This material has extremely non linear characteristic.
– Gapped SiC arrestors.
– Gapless surge arrestors.
 Cont..
• V-I characteristics:

Fig: V-I characteristics of surge arrestors

 Cont..
• The characteristics of an arrestor can be precisely selected
keeping in mind the insulation withstand capacity of the
equipment to be protected.
• It is seen from the fig. that temperature coefficient of the
material is slightly -ve at low currents, but becomes +ve.
• The properties (or) characteristics of a materials are used
to design a surge arrestor such that, it controls the dynamic
over voltages in addition to switching surges.
• A single column arrestor is capable of absorbing around 7
KJ/KV of the maximum continuous operating
voltage(MCOV) .
• In many DC applications, the energy dissipation capability
of a single column arrestor is inadequate and hence
multiple column arrestors are used, which are connected in
parallel. They operate one after other in a sequence.
 Cont..
• Limitations of a surge arrestor:
– The current flowing through the arrestor does
not have natural current zeros, as alternating
current does, to aid in resealing the arrestor
against sustained direct voltage.
– A limit to the energy dissipation by the
arrestor in a short series of discharges, so that
the resistor is not damaged.
– A limit to the crest current, so that electrodes
of the spark gap are not excessively eroded,
with consequent increase in spark over
voltage.
 Cont..
– Greater part of the apparatus requiring protection &
having direct voltage buffered by significant lumped
inductances from the sources of overvoltage surges.
• Over voltage reaching the convertor from the DC
line must pass through the DC reactor.
• Those originating in the AC systems through
transformers.
– In case of internal failure of a surge arrestor, the fault
current through the arrestor should not cause violent
shattering of the arrestor housing. Therefore the fault
current with stand of the arrestor should be equal to or
greater than the maximum fault current through the
arrestor at its installation fault.
 Cont..
• Locations of a surge arrestor:
DC breakers:
• A circuit breaker is a device which protects the electrical
equipment of a power system from over voltages and over
currents by breaking the circuit under fault condition and hence
stopping the fault current to flow through the equipment.
• Principal of operation:
– Under abnormal condition, a relay is used to sense a fault information and
generate a trip signal to the circuit breaker. The circuit breaker open its
contacts to isolate faulty section from healthy one.
– After clearing the fault again circuit breaker closes its contacts.
• When the circuit breaker contacts open, an arc is drawn and it is
very much necessary that this energy should be dissipated to
interrupt the arc current.
• This arc burns until the total energy is dissipated and by this time
circuit breaker gets damaged.
 Cont..
• On a HVDC systems with two or more terminals, temporary
faults can be cleared by grid control and permanent faults can
be cleared by the both grid and DC breakers.
• But the DC circuit has some serious problems,
– The absence of natural current zeros unlike in AC circuits,
where we have natural current zeros so that arc is quenched
resulting in satisfactory operation of circuit breaker.
– Dissipation of large energy stored in the inductance of the
circuit.
• The lack of suitable dc breakers for HVDC power systems has
been alleged to be a disadvantage of such systems.
• But in DC transmission, a circuit breaker need not to be
interrupt the short circuit current, for such currents can be
limited by grid control to the magnitude of rated currents, but
rather a breaker is used to interrupt load currents in dc
transmission.
 Cont..
• With such breakers, lines could be switched into or out of
an unfaulted network with out running voltage down
• To avoid the above problems, two types of commutating
circuits are used to create artificial current zeros.
– passive commutation circuit
– Active commutation circuit
• The basic of using commutation circuits is to create zeros
of current through the contacts of the switch
– by the oscillatory discharge of a capacitor current
through the switch. ( the crest currents of the
oscillation must be greater than direct current to be
interrupted.)
– by applying a counter voltage higher than the system
voltage
 Cont..
• Passive commutation circuit:
• Capacitor ‘C’ is initially uncharged.
• When the contacts ‘M’ open, the main current is diverted
to the capacitor, with the result that current to be
interrupted by ‘M’ is small.
• The nonlinear arrestor ‘R’ absorbs energy with out greatly
adding to the voltage across ‘M’.
 Cont..
• Active commutation circuit:
• Normally main contact ‘M’ and charging contact ‘A’ are
closed and capacitor ‘C’ is charged to line voltage through
high resistance ‘R’.
• Contact ‘B’ is open and have line voltage across them.
• When it is desired to interrupt current Id in the main
circuit, the operating mechanism opens contact ‘A’ and
closer contact ‘B’, initiating the discharge, and
immediately afterwards opens main contact ‘M’, which
interrupt the current at a current zero, such as ‘Z’ in
shown waveform.
 Cont..
• Characteristics of a DC breaker:
• The breaker is characterized by the four variables of interest
used in its application to the system. These are
– Voltage capability
• It depends on a) the voltage during interruption process
& b) steady state operating voltage and transients in the
systems.
• Highest permissible voltage gives the best performance
in terms of lower energy absorption and shorter
switching time.
– Current capability
• The current interrupting capability of a breaker does not
have to be much above rated current in the circuit,
because the converter control can be relied on to bring
the fault current down to the rated levels.
 Cont..
– Energy capability
• It depends on many factors such as the inductance,
convertor voltage and current, breaker voltage and
switching time.
– Switching capability
• It considered the following factors:
• A) time required to generate a trip signal, this can be kept small
around (around 2ms). There is real advantage in generating the
trip signal must faster than the time taken to reduce the fault
current using convertor control(around 30-50ms)
• B) time required to separate the contacts in the main
breaker(10ms)
• C) the interruption time (Ti ), reduction of Id reduces Ti in linear
fashion.
• D) time required to bring the DC systems back to steady state
post fault condition.
 Cont..
• The above analysis show that there is significant saving in
switching time possible by increased voltage capability
while current capability may be limited by grid control.
• The requirements on the switching time depends on the
AC systems requirements for maintaining dc power flow in
transient conditions, taking in to account the
considerations of system stability.
 Cont..
• Applications of a DC breakers:
• The application of a DC breaker is required mainly for fault
clearing process in MTDC systems.
• However, even for two terminal DC systems, the DC
breakers can be useful in the following situations.
– When the convertors feed two parallel lines.
– When the parallel connected converters feed the same line.
– When the current need to be transferred from the ground return
to the metallic return during monopolar operation. The breakers
for this application are termed as MRTB(metallic return transfer
breakers).
The Enemy
Traveling Wave/ Overvoltage Protection

• Lightning hits mid-span

• Current divides and then

propagates

• V=IxR
Transmission Line without Surge Arresters
Transmission Line with Surge Arresters