Impact of DC fault blocking capability on the sizing of the DC-DC Modular Multilevel Converter

Juan D Paez (1) , Florent Morel (1) , Seddik Bacha (1, 2) , Piotr Dworakowski (1) , David Frey (2)

1 SuperGrid Institute SAS
2 G2ELab - Laboratoire de Génie Electrique de Grenoble

The capability of DC-DC converters of blocking DC faults is an important issue for the development of HVDC meshed grids. This paper analyzes the impact on the converter design of including such characteristic for the DC-DC Modular Multilevel Converter. Steady state and transient analysis are proposed and tested, showing how the converter should be oversized to include this feature. From this analysis it is concluded that including the fault blocking capability has an impact on the power losses and the investment in semiconductors but not in the investment on capacitors. The converter presents better indicators for low DC transformation ratios demonstrating the interest of the topology for these applications. However for those ratios, the impact of including fault blocking capability is the highest.

Mots clés: HVDC; Modular Multilevel Converter; DC-DC converter; Fault blocking

Domaines: Energie électrique; Electronique

Juan D Paez, Florent Morel, Seddik Bacha, Piotr Dworakowski, David Frey. Impact of DC fault blocking capability on the sizing of the DC-DC Modular Multilevel Converter. 22nd European Conference on Power Electronics and Applications (EPE'20 ECCE Europe), Sep 2020, Lyon, France. pp.1-10, ⟨10.23919/EPE20ECCEEurope43536.2020.9215938⟩. ⟨hal-02987204⟩