Design of protection schemes for multi-terminal HVDC systems

Multi-terminal HVDC is an important new technology for bulk power transfer from large sources of remote renewables to large load centers. Recently MTDC grids have become more technically feasible due to improvements in VSC based converters, which can reverse currents and generally have greater control than LCC. Furthermore, emerging DC breakers technology unlocks the possibility of de-energizing only the faulted section of an MTDC without losing the whole grid. The protection relaying in such grids is not trivial: it must be very reliable, robust to the converter control system׳s effect on the post fault transients and act quickly, before the fault current develops beyond the presently modest interrupt capability of DC breakers. Within this challenging environment, this paper discusses in detail the important considerations for designing MTDC protection, including accurate modeling of the converter topology, associated control scheme and the DC link itself, supported by the results of novel transient simulation studies. This context is then used to appraise the suitability of the existing protection of HVDC and MTDC grids and suggests future work in the area.