A Solid State CB topology for DC microgrid application

Abstract

With the advancements of different renewable energy sources, DC microgrid gets a scope to explore its operation. The protection of low voltage DC (LVDC) microgrid faces a greater challenge with comparison to AC microgrid because of the absence of zero crossing nature of DC signal. As solid state circuit breaker (SSCB) is more capable of providing fast operation compared to mechanical or hybrid type of circuit breaker, it gets more attention by the researchers. Previously used thyristor based circuit breaker takes operation time about tens to few hundred micro seconds. In this research, a new topology of thyristor based SSCB has been proposed for DC microgrid, that breaks the faulty line with lower time compared to existing topologies. Along with this, it also requires lesser numbers of thyristor switches, which reduce the overall losses of circuit breaker. The protection of a monopolar DC line against permanent pole-to-pole fault has been successfully studied in this paper through MATLAB/Simulink platform.