An Integrated Multi-port Hybrid DC Circuit Breaker

A massive number of hybrid DC circuit breakers (HCBs) have to be installed to protect a voltage source converter based multi-terminal DC (MTDC) system, leading to quite high costs. To reduce the implementation cost employing HCB in DC systems, this paper presents an integrated multi-port hybrid DC circuit breaker (IMP-HCB), which consists of an integrated HCB (IHCB) and a diode bridge. The topology of the breaker is presented, and the operation principles are introduced and analyzed. Comparisons between the existing typical HCB scheme and the proposed IMP-HCB scheme are conducted, showing that the cost of the proposed IMP-HCB scheme is much lower. The effectiveness of the IMP-HCB is verified via a three-terminal MTDC model built in PSCAD/EMTDC, and the performances are also compared to the typical HCB.