HVDC TRANSMISSION AND SHORT CIRCUIT CURRENT CONTRIBUTION OF HVDC LIGHT

By Jijo Francis S7, EEE

INTRODUCTION
The first dc link was set up in 1954 in between Swedish main land and the island of Gotland. The use of an HVDC link in an ac system requires converter stations at each end of the line.

LINE DIAGRAM OF HVDC SYSTEM OPERATION

GENERATING STATION STEP-UP TXR STEP-DOWN TXR

G.S

C1

C2

CONVERTER STATION 1

CONVERTER STATION 2

SENDING END

RECEIVING END

TYPES OF DC LINKS

MONOPOLAR DC LINK

BIPOLAR DC LINK

HOMOPOLAR DC LINK

One conductor & Earth return path; More economical

Two Conductors. More Reliable.

Two or more Conductors.

Comparison b/w HVDC & EHV-AC system

CHARACTERISTICS

EHV-AC SYSTEM

HVDC SYSTEM

1.) Line Cost 2.) Skin Effect 3.) Line losses 4.) Power Transfer 5.) Voltage Control

Higher Present High Limited Difficult

Lower Absent Low No Limit Easier

CHARACTERISTICS

EHV-AC SYSTEM

HVDC SYSTEM

6.) Compensation Required. 7.) Corona & Radio Interference. 8.) Reliability.

Series & shunt No Compensation. Compensation Less. More.

Lesser. More.

CHARACTERISTICS

EHV-AC SYSTEM

HVDC SYSTEM

9.) Short-circuit currents. 10.) Control System

Large Simple, cheaper & limited. Very Low.

Small Difficult , costlier & fast. Much Higher.

11.) Stability of AC networks.

LIMITATIONS OF HVDC TRANSMISSION

Costly Terminal Equipment. More Maintenance of line conductors. Difficult Voltage Transformation. HVDC Circuit Breakers are not available. Side effect due to Earth current. Block Reactive Power. Presence of Harmonic Distortion.

HVDC LIGHT

HVDC LIGHT ???

HVDC Light is an environment friendly technology for modern electrical power transmission systems. HVDC Light cables are buried underground/underwater.

HVDC LIGHT TECHNOLOGY

HVDC Light is a high voltage, direct current transmission Technology . It consists of two converter stations and a pair of underground cables interconnecting each converter station. The converter stations are designed to be unmanned and virtually maintenance-free. This technology provides the HVDC Light converter with a switching speed 27 times faster than a traditional HVDC, thyristor controlled converter.

TECHNICAL FEATURES
Advantageous for long distance cable transmission. Power reversal without interruption. Can start up dead A.C network. No increase of short circuit current. Equal or longer service life than XLPE AC cables.

HVDC LIGHT INSTALLATIONS

 The HVDC Light transmission system mainly consists of two cables and two converter stations. Each converter station is composed of a voltage source converter (VSC) built up with IGBTs, phase reactors, ac filters and transformer.

By using pulse width modulation (PWM), the amplitude and phase angle (even the frequency) of the converter AC output voltage can be adjusted simultaneously.

APPLICATIONS OF HVDC LIGHT

In feed of Small scale power ; e.g. small hydraulic generators, wind mills & solar power harvesters. Feed small loads. Asynchronous grid connection.

SHORT CIRCUIT CURRENT CONTRIBUTION OF HVDC LIGHT

One of the most concerned issues from customers is the contribution of HVDC Light to short circuit currents. The main reason for being interested in this issue is that the contribution of the HVDC Light to short circuit currents may have some significant impact on the ratings for the circuit breakers in the existing AC systems.

 Both the theoretical analyses and practical simulations have been performed and the results show that with Higher short-circuit current the voltage stability and performance is likely to be improved.

If the HVDC Light contributes a higher short-circuit current, the voltage dip due to distant fault is possibly reduced and thereby the connected electricity consumers may suffer less from disturbances.

PROOF
Consider the single line diagram of a transmission system :-

 The possible maximum relative short circuit current increment (Imax) is determined by the short circuit ratio(SCR). It is found that the Imax is inversely in proportional to the SCR as shown in the figure. The short circuit ratio (SCR) is defined as the short circuit capacity of the AC system observed at CCP bus divided with the power rating of the converter.

It can be seen from the figure that the contribution of HVDC Light results in a significant impact only on the current of LINE1, fault current in LINE3 & LINE4 is slightly reduced & the load current in LINE5 is slightly increased compared with no HVDC Light connected.

 It is important to observe from Figure that the higher the fault current, the higher the bus voltage. The higher fault current may have some negative impact to the circuit breakers. However, the resulted higher bus voltage during the fault may have a positive impact to the voltage and power stability of the AC network & the connected electricity consumers may suffer less from the disturbance.

CONCLUSIONS:
HVDC transmission system - used for higher range than the EHV-AC system. More Reliable Best Method.

HVDC LIGHT The new tool for transmission. High Short Circuit Current Contribution Voltage Stability Less Disturbance in T.S Customers benefited.

REFERENCES
1.) DC Transmission based on voltage source converters, Gunnar Asplund,Kjell Eriksson and Kjell Svesson,1997. 2.) The ABCs of HVDC transmission technologies,IEEE Power and Energy Magazine,2006. 3.) A course in Electrical Power , J.B. Gupta. 4.) On the Short Circuit Current Contribution of HVDC Light, (IEEE) Y. Jiang-Hfner, M. Hyttinen, and B. Pjrvi. 5.) Wikipedia & other web resources.