A Fault Current Limiting Approach for Commutation Failure Prevention in LCC-HVDC Transmission Systems

Commutation failure is one of the most frequent failures in Line-Commutated Converter based High-Voltage Direct-Current (LCC-HVDC) systems which may lead to the outage of HVDC links, and thus affect the performance of the power system. Most commutation failures are caused by voltage reduction due to AC system faults. In this paper, a Commutation Failure Prevention Module (CFPM) is developed which inserts the optimal value of resistance proportional to the reduced extinction angle in series with the fault current path using a simple switching method. When a fault occurs at the inverter AC side, a Self Turn-off Switch (STS) starts switching with a prespecified frequency and controlled modulation index which limits the fault current to the desired value and inhibits commutation failure. The salient feature of the proposed CFPM is that it is fully controllable. In addition, despite the available controller modification methods which are not effective for low-impedance faults, the proposed CFPM can prevent commutation failure regardless of the fault severity. The practical performance and feasibility of the developed CFPM is validated through laboratory testing, using the real-time Opal-RT hardware prototyping platform. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed strategy can effectively eliminate the commutation failure or repetitive commutation failures under different fault types.