DC thyristor circuit breakers: An investigation of current interruption ability

Abstract

The aims of the project were to investigate DC Thyristor Circuit Breaker (TCB) current interruption and appraise the current
interruption performance in simulated systems.
A generalized analysis was developed which enabled succinct assessment of the current interruption performance of different thyristor circuit breaker configurations.
A 250V, 60A DC Thyristor Circuit Breaker was analysed and a study of TCB-system interaction was made.
A novel thyristor circuit breaker switching overvoltage control technique was also investigated.
The project findings on TCB-system interaction demonstrated that practical thyristor circuit breaker selection and design must be done in conjunction with the system configuration and its parameters. The normalized and analytical approaches were found to be useful for determining TCB design criteria but computer simulation tools, such as SPICE, are necessary for predicting the full range of TCB current interruption.