Study on Protective Performance of HVDC

Transmission Line Protection With Different Types

of Line Fault

Han Kunlun
School of Electric Power
South China University of Technology
Guangzhou, China
hkl1st@163.com
Cai Zexiang
School of Electric Power
South China University of Technology
Guangzhou, China
epzxcai@scut.edu.cn
Liu Yang
School of Electric Power
South China University of Technology
Guangzhou, China
liuyang20041122@163.com


AbstractHVDC line protection system is composed of traveling
wave protection as the main protection, under voltage protection
and differential protection as the backup protection. The
responses of the HVDC line protection criterion are not same at
different fault situations, and it also makes the operation
characteristics of the line protection quite different. In this paper,
based on the EMTDC simulation platform and an actual HVDC
power transmission system and its protection system, the changes
of voltage and current of the HVDC line are measured, and the
influences of fault location, fault resistance and the external
disturbance to the HVDC line protection are also analyzed in
detail. At the same time, the relation between the rejecting act of
the protection and the factors mentioned above are also discussed,
and some improvement schemes are also proposed.
Keywords- HVDC Line FaultTraveling Wave Protection
Under Voltage Protection Differential Protection Protective
Performance
I. INTRODUCTION
The transmission distance of HVDC system is particularly
long, and this makes the probability of HVDC line fault
increased greatly. The actual data coming from electric power
enterprises show that 50% faults happened in HVDC system
belong to HVDC line faults. And this becomes a serious threat
to the power system operation safely and steadily
[1-3]
.
The operation of HVDC system is often affected by the AC
system and the HVDC control system, and this makes its
operation environment more complex. At the same time, the
process of HVDC line fault isnt analyzed clearly and the
principles of it are also analyzed deficiently. All of these
mentioned above make it difficult to the research of HVDC
line protection. The actual operational data also show that the
effect of the current HVDC line protection system is limited
[1,
2]
. So, it is necessary to study in depth the factors which are
affecting the operation of HVDC line protection system.
Lots of research has been made about HVDC line
protection systems. In [4-7] made a detailed introduction to the
configuration and structure of the HVDC line protection
system. In [8-10], the responses of HVDC line protection
system during a line fault are analyzed by the simulation of the
typical accident cases. And in [11, 12], some defects of HVDC
line protection system are pointed out on the basic of
introducing its realization principles, and a new wavelet
transformation protection method is discussed.
In this paper, some typical faults are simulated on the
EMTDC simulation platform (founded according to an actual
HVDC transmission system and SIEMENS protection) such as
line faults with different fault location, fault occurs at the outer
side of the smoothing reactor (between the smoothing reactor
and the converter) and converter fault (shown in Fig. 1). The
changes of the voltage and current of the DC line are measured,
and the influences of fault location, fault resistance and the
external disturbance to the HVDC line protection are also
analyzed in detail. The reasons that cause the protection
rejecting act are also discussed.

Figure 1. HVDC system configuration.
II. CONFIGURATION OF HVDC LINE PROTECTION SYSTEM
A typical HVDC line protection system configuration of
SIEMENS is shown in Fig. 2.

Figure 2. HVDC line protection system configuration.
Project Supported by the National Science Foundation of China (51077055),
Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, SCUT
978-1-4577-0365-2/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE 358
The protection system is mainly composed of three parts:
traveling wave protection, under voltage protection and
differential protection. Three are three suits of the protection
systems like this equipped in each converter station and all of
them are the same. When at least two suits of the protection
systems act at the same time, a line fault is proved to occur, and
this is called choose two from three mode.
III. PROTECTIVE PERFORMANCE OF TRAVELING WAVE
PROTECTION
When line fault occurs, the voltage and current wave
traveling through the transmission line contains plenty of fault
information, and the information is extracted by traveling wave
protection system. Traveling wave protection is designed to
work as the main protection of HVDC line. The criteria of
traveling wave protection are as follows:

> A
> A
>
) ( . . 4 . 0 ), ( . . 15 . 0
. . 4 . 0
. . 175 . 0
inverter at u p rectifier at u p i
u p U
u p
dt
du
dl
dl
(1)
A. Traveling Wave Protection Performance to Fault
Location
Traveling wave protection detects the voltage change rate
du/dt and the voltage change amplitude AU
dl
at the same time.
And if the two kinds of criterion exceed their settings, the
current change amplitude AI
dl
is detected. If the current
criterion also exceeds its setting, the traveling wave protection
will act at once. Fig. 3 gives the responses of the voltage and
current at rectifier side with different fault location.
1.0000 1.0010 1.0020 1.0030 1.0040 1.0050 1.0060 1.0070 1.0080 1.0090 1.0100
-0.10
0.00
0.10
0.20
0.30
0.40
0.50
0.60
0.70
0.80
0.90
1
2
3
4
.
)
.
(
u
p
U
d
l
A
(sec) Time

1.0000 1.0010 1.0020 1.0030 1.0040 1.0050 1.0060 1.0070 1.0080 1.0090 1.0100
-0.10
0.00
0.10
0.20
0.30
0.40
0.50
0.60
0.70
1
2
3
4
.
)
.
(
/
u
p
d
t
d
u
(sec) Time

Figure 3. Operation performense of traveling wave protection with different
fault location.
Fig. 3 shows changes of the voltage change rate du/dt and
the voltage change amplitude AU
dl
with different fault location:
at the beginning (curve1), at the middle (curve2), at the end
(curve3) and the external (curve4). We can see that both the
voltage change rate du/dt and the voltage change amplitude
AU
dl
can exceed their settings when a line fault occurs at any
point of the DC line, and the response time they need is from
0.2ms to 3ms after the fault occurs. Considered the traveling
wave transmits through the transmission line needs some time,
the farther the distance from the fault point to the place where
the protection equipment installed, the more time it needs to
exceed its setting. So traveling wave protection is designed to
protect the whole HVDC transmission line. To external fault
(between the smoothing reactor and the converter) and
converter fault, traveling wave needs to through DC
equipments such as smoothing reactor and DC filter, the
voltage change rate du/dt is further reduced and it cant exceed
its setting, so traveling wave protection accordingly doesnt act.
B. Traveling Wave Protection Performance to Fault
Resistance
Fault Resistance is always exist in an actual HVDC line
fault, and its effect to the operation performance of HVDC line
protection is obviously. And some traveling wave protection
rejecting act accidents happened in China HVDC system has
proved it. Fig. 4 shows the change of the voltage and current at
rectifier side with different fault resistance.
1.0000 1.0050 1.0100
-0.20
0.00
0.20
0.40
0.60
0.80
1
3
2
.
)
.
(
u
p
U
d
l
A
(sec) Time
1.0000 1.0050 1.0100
-0.100
-0.050
0.000
0.050
0.100
0.150
0.200
0.250
1
2
3
.
)
.
(
/
u
p
d
t
d
u
(sec) Time

Figure 4. Operation performense of traveling wave protection with different
fault resistance.
From Fig. 4 we can see that with the increase of fault
resistance (50, curve1; 150, curve2; 250, curve3), the
voltage change rate du/dt and the voltage change amplitude
AU
dl
becomes lower and lower, and the effect to du/dt is
greater than it to AU
dl
. When the fault resistance exceeds a
critical value, the du/dt will not reach its setting, and then the
359
rejecting act of the traveling wave protection appears. To the
traveling wave protection installed at rectifier side, the longer
the distance of fault location from it, the lower the critical
value is.
IV. PROTECTIVE PERFORMANCE OF UUNDER VVOLTAGE
PROTECTION
Under voltage protection is designed to work as the backup
of traveling wave protection and its criteria are as follows:

<
>
. . 25 . 0
. . 175 . 0
u p U
u p
dt
du
dl
(2)
Under voltage protection is composed of two criteria, the
voltage change rate du/dt and the low voltage Udl. The voltage
change rate du/dt and its setting are the same as them in the
traveling wave protection, and its operation signal will be keep
20ms here. The Udl is another criterion of the under voltage
protection and its setting is very low. Besides these, a voltage
blocking signal is also joined to the protection. The low voltage
Udl and the voltage blocking signal work together can avoid
the malfunction during the transient period. When the traveling
wave protection is quit or it is under the state of rejecting act,
the under voltage protection will act with the delay of 50ms
and it will work as backup protection.
Because of the voltage change rate du/dt in the traveling
wave protection and in the under voltage protection is the same,
a limitation appeared that when the traveling wave protection
rejecting act because of the high fault resistance, the under
voltage protection will also rejecting act due to the same reason
and its backup function disappeared.
0.950 1.000 1.050 1.100 1.150 1.200 1.250
0.00
0.20
0.40
0.60
0.80
1.00
1.20
3
2
1
.
)
.
(
u
p
U
d
l
(sec) Time

Figure 5. Line voltage with different fault resistance.
Fig. 5 shows the line voltage responses to the faults with
different fault resistance (50, curve1; 150, curve2; 250,
curve3). All the faults occur at 1s, and the duration time is
60ms. After the faults occur, the degree of line voltage drop is
not the same with different fault resistance, but the absolute
value of all line voltage can drop under 0.25 p.u. (at rectifier) to
make the low voltage criterion exceed its setting, only the
response time is obviously slower than that of du/dt (0.2-3ms).
So, whether the under voltage protection act correctly is mainly
determined by the voltage change rate du/dt. When traveling
wave protection rejecting act due to high fault resistance, under
voltage protection will also not act with the same reason. This
reduces the reliability of under voltage protection as a backup
protection.
V. PROTECTIVE PERFORMANCE OF DIFFERENTAIL
PROTECTION
Differential protection is designed to work as the backup
protection of traveling wave protection and under voltage
protection, and its criteria are as follows:

. . 05 . 0 u p I I
os dl
>
(3)
Differential protection, which is the backup protection of
the traveling wave protection and the under voltage protection,
has the function relatively simple, is designed to detect those
faults that the other protections can not response. Its criterion is
the differential current between rectifier and inverter. The
protection also needs some blocking signals to avoid its
malfunction and as a backup protection, it has a delay of 500ms.
There are four kinds of blocking signals in the protection.
Among them, the synchronous transmission failure blocking
signal is a special one. The principles of the synchronous
transmission failure blocking signal are as follow: using the
line current minus its value 65ms before, and if this difference
exceeds a certain limit, the differential protection will be
blocked for 600ms. When a line fault occurs, if the protection
is blocked for 600ms firstly, plus the protection delay of 500ms,
the total delay will reach 1.1s. Before the protection act, the
HVDC control system has been worked in time. So the
protection unable to play its function as it is designed, and this
phenomenon is very common in practice.
VI. CONCLUSION
Traveling wave protection works as the main protection of
HVDC Transmission line. It is designed to protect the whole
HVDC transmission line and it also can distinguish the internal
and external faults to the line correctly. As its main criterion,
the voltage change rate du/dt is sensitive to the change of fault
resistance. To a high fault resistance, the rejecting act of
traveling wave protection perhaps occurs.
Under voltage protection is designed as the backup
protection of traveling wave protection, and the criterion of
voltage change rate is the same with it in traveling wave
protection. So, its function of backup is limited to the traveling
wave protection.
The differential protection is designed as the backup of
traveling wave protection and under voltage protection.
Synchronous transmission failure blocking signal is too
sensitive, and its delay is too long. In practice operation, its
backup function is hardly to realize.
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