VARC – A Cost-Effective Ultrafast DC Circuit Breaker Concept

Abstract

A concept for a dc circuit-breaker is proposed. A vacuum interrupter is used together with a resonant circuit excited by a power electronic converter to create a zero-crossing in the interrupter current. A low amount of semiconductor devices is needed because they perform repeated switching operations during current excitation. Tests have been performed with a prototype interrupting 10 kA against 9 kV in 3 ms.