Alternative Solutions for Thyristor Control and Gating for HVDC-valves

U. Åström B. Danielsson K. Nyberg

ABB Power Systems AB
SE-771 80 LUDVIKA, Sweden

Abstract: The next generation of thyristor valves for HVDC devel- ing at overvoltage and recovery protection, as well as moni-
oped by ABB will be provided with an on-line diagnosis system. toring of the thyristor position. It is important that the control
This is realised by further development of the thyristor control unit, and protection of each thyristor operate independently from
TCU, using state of the art electronic circuits. Detailed information the other thyristor positions in order to achieve full redun-
such as the status of the snubber circuit, thyristor temperature, etc.,
dancy of the positions in the valve and to avoid unnecessary
will be continuously available for each thyristor position. Each thy-
ristor position has its own individual control, protection and moni- commutation failures. The information on the status of the
toring, thus giving true redundancy for every component. With the thyristor is sent back to the VBE in a separate optical fibre.
diagnosis system the intervals between scheduled maintenance meas- This Indication Pulse, IP, is binary, and contains only a mes-
ures can be increased. The diagnosis system will also give accurate sage stating whether the thyristor position is working or not,
information on the overload capability of the converter in real con- and thus the resolution in this information is limited. Also, if
ditions. the thyristor is fired by the protective firing system, an IP is
given via this optical fibre. When the number of failing thyr-
Keywords: Thyristor Valve, Thyristor Gating, Thyristor Monitor- istor positions equals the number of redundant thyristors in a
ing, Thyristor Valve Diagnosis
valve, the converter is tripped. Otherwise all the thyristors in
the valve might be damaged.
I. INTRODUCTION
Drawing on their separate experiences, the two HVDC
manufacturers ASEA and BBC were able to derive synerget-
A thyristor valve for HVDC is built up from several thyris-
ic benefits when the two companies merged, forming ABB.
tors connected in series, all of them on different voltage lev-
Thus, for HVDC thyristor valves ABB has experience from
el. Since all the thyristors are controlled by a common con-
four different designs, the BBC-design, the ASEA ETT de-
trol system, Valve Base Electronics, VBE, on ground poten-
sign, the ASEA LTT design and the ABB design. These dif-
tial, the communication between the control system and the
ferent systems have been evaluated in order to find the basis
thyristors must be electrically insulated. Different systems for
for the next generation of thyristor valves and to establish the
this have been developed, e.g. magnetic coupled circuits,
possibilities of utilising state of the art technology to meet
optical systems using lenses, and what has become the domi-
requirements from clients.
nating design principle today, signal transmission using fibre
optics.
II. THE BBC DESIGN OF THE TCU
For the firing of the thyristors the optical control signal FP
(Firing Pulse), transmitted in the fibre must in some way turn
The basic functions are as described above. The TCU at
the thyristor from blocking condition into conducting state.
each thyristor position is powered by the voltage across the
This can be done directly in the thyristor if the light pulse has
corresponding thyristor. The circuit diagram on the power
sufficient energy by using Light Triggered Thyristors, LTTs,
supply circuit is shown in Fig. 1. In brief, the TCU includes
or the light pulse can be converted into an electrical pulse in
the following features:
a Thyristor Control Unit, TCU, that gives an electrical gate
• Protective firing of the thyristor at high voltages
pulse to an Electrically Triggered Thyristor, ETT. Usually the
• Protective firing of the thyristor at high dU/dt during the
TCU also includes protective facilities, such as protective fir-
recovery interval
• Indication on protective firing from the TCU
• Indication of failing (= short-circuited) thyristor.
The TCU is a single Printed Circuit Board, p.c.b., 200 x
300 mm. All components on the thyristor level, except the
snubber capacitor and the water-cooled snubber resistor, are
located on this p.c.b. The logic circuits are located inside a
screened enclosure so as to separate low voltage electronics
from the high power components. The circuits necessary for
the power supply of the TCU and the components for the
protective firing are located on the p.c.b. outside the screened
enclosure.
 firing of the thyristors before an excessive voltage level across
the thyristor has been reached.
The level of the protective firing is determined by a com-
pensated high voltage divider, with high impedance, and the
protective firing will operate only if the power supply of the
TCU is working. A high-ohm resistor outside the TCU limits
the fault current in case there is a total short circuit of the
voltage divider.
The complete TCU is thus enclosed in a shielded box, 40 x
70 x 190 mm.

IV. THE ASEA LIGHT TRIGGERED DESIGN

Fig. 1. Basic circuit diagram of BBC thyristor control unit.
In order to investigate the LTT concept in detail, several
different LTT concepts were investigated and tested in ac-
Since the trigger pulse for the protective firing is derived cordance with IEC Standard Publication 700 and IEEE Std.
directly from the voltage across the thyristor via a set of BOD 857-1990. A test valve with LTT was installed by ASEA in
(Break Over Diode) elements connected in series, the protec- the Konti-Skan link in 1988 as a replacement for a mercury
tive firing operates almost independently from the rest of the arc valve [1].
TCU and will work even if there is no power supply to the If triggering of the thyristors is the only desired feature it is
TCU. possible to eliminate all electronics at the thyristor level. In
The auxiliary power to the TCU is taken directly from the practice, the use of LTTs instead of ETTs does not mean that
main snubber current. all the electronics on a thyristor basis can be eliminated. A
minimum requirement imposed on thyristor valves for HVDC
III. THE ASEA DESIGN OF THE TCU is that a defective thyristor position must be detected in order
to trip the converter if all the redundant thyristor positions
Basically the ASEA design is similar to the BBC design. fail. In the test valve this was solved by using a separate mon-
There is one TCU for each thyristor, and the power supply for itoring unit and one return optical fibre for each position. The
the TCU is derived from the voltage across the thyristor. The protective firing was solved by designing the thyristors as self-
basic elements of the snubber circuit and power supply are protecting units. In this test installation no recovery protec-
given in Fig. 2. tion was necessary due to special conditions at this station.
The main concern in this installation was the lifetime of
light sources. Since the LTT requires a fairly high amount of
light for safe triggering, even though a multistage amplifying
gate was used, the light sources must operate at very high
power. Both LEDs and laser diodes are used. In order to re-
duce the number of the costly laser diodes, and to obtain the
necessary redundancy, the optical fibres from three laser di-
odes are mixed together in an optical mixer and serve six
thyristors. (However, there is no redundancy for the optical
mixers). For the thyristors fired by LEDs, there is one LED
for each thyristor, see Figs. 3a and 3b. The degradation of the
light sources has been closely followed over the years.
With the LTT HVDC valves the drawback is the reduced
voltage capability of the self-protecting thyristors, and the cost
Fig. 2. Basic circuit diagram of ASEA thyristor control unit.
and maintenance of the light sources. Moreover, not all the
electronics on each thyristor position can be eliminated un-
The complete TCU is encapsulated in one shielded box. less the monitoring and protection are sacrificed. The arrange-
This is made possible since all the high power components in ment for the recovery protection is complicated if the redun-
the snubber circuit and in the power supply to the TCU are dancy of the thyristor positions is to be secured. Recovery
separated from the TCU. Also, the auxiliary power to the TCU protection operating on groups of thyristors, or even on a com-
is taken from a tap on the capacitors forming the snubber ca- plete valve, have proven less reliable in earlier tests. Thus,
pacitor. This means that the main snubber current does not when using LTTs, the electronics and the associated arrange-
pass through any active components or through the TCU cir- ments for power supply on each thyristor position cannot eas-
cuits, and the maximum transient current in the TCU board is ily be eliminated and, in a practical HVDC thyristor valve,
limited by a factor of ten to about 10 A. use of LTTs instead of ETTs will end up in a compromise
The charging of the TCU starts on the positive slope of the without the full advantage of either concept.
thyristor voltage and in normal operation the TCU is fully At ABB today, LTTs are only used for special applications,
charged before the zero crossing of the voltage. Further, steep where ETTs cannot be used for technical reasons.
front impulses will charge the TCU fast enough to ensure safe
 VI. FUTURE ABB VALVE ELECTRONICS

In recent years there has been a demand for increased use

of on-line diagnosis of most sophisticated equipment, such as
cars, circuit-breakers, power transformers, etc. Another gen-
eral trend in society is towards the increased exchange of in-
formation, and a great deal of this information exchange is
done via fibre optical communication. In the thyristor valves
the optical fibres are at present used solely to transmit the
most basic information, like thyristor position operating and
protective firing operation, IP (down channel), and firing or-
der, FP (up channel). This means that the capability of these
communication links is far from fully utilised, and much more
information can be transmitted by these links, such as detailed
Fig. 3a. Optical firing systems for self-protecting LTTs, based on Light
information on the conditions in the thyristor valve. Howev-
Emitting Diodes (LEDs).
er, this requires even more intelligence on each thyristor po-
sition, and this can be obtained only by further development
of the TCU. This contradicts the ideas behind the LTT con-
cept and the elimination of the TCU. The development of
microcomputers and microelectronics has been awesome in
the last few years. The reliability of electronic circuits mainly
depends on the number of components involved and not on
the complexity of the circuits. Thus, by implementing the lat-
est in electronics into the TCU, it is possible to increase reli-
ability and at the same time obtain better resolution in the
monitoring of the valve.
A diagnosis system for the thyristor valves gives the fol-
lowing advantages:
• reduced overall cost
• unscheduled repair can be planned in advance
Fig. 3b. Optical firing systems for self-protecting LTTs, based on Laser • simplification and reduction of scheduled maintenance
Diodes (LDs). • increased availability
• information on the overload capability of the valve at
every instant.
V. PRESENT ABB DESIGN
Most of the measurements carried out on each thyristor
The present ABB TCU is a further development of the position during the annual maintenance period can be made
ASEA design. No major changes have been made for many continuously on line while the valve is in operation and can
years. The most important modification is the conversion from be transmitted to the VBE for evaluation. Thus, the mainte-
discrete components into thick film circuits that was carried nance work traditionally done on HVDC valves can be re-
out in 1987. The electronics consist of three hybrid circuits. duced as regards both time and frequency. Of course, the di-
The only discrete components are those associated with the agnosis system must, as far as possible, be independent of the
power supply and the final gate drive transistor. 12,000 TCU basic TCU functions in order to avoid the firing and protec-
units have been produced, and operational experience is ex- tion circuits to depend on the operation of the diagnostic sys-
cellent. It is considered an advantage that the high power com- tem.
ponents are separated from the circuit board, and that there A microcomputer-based thyristor diagnosis system for
are no active components in series with the main snubber com- HVDC valves is now being tested at ABB, before installation
ponents. Another basic design idea is to avoid high currents in a test valve. The features of this system are:
on the p.c.b. Therefore, as in the ASEA design, the power • monitoring of the snubber circuit
supply of the TCU is taken from a tap in the snubber circuit, • monitoring of the heat sink temperature
and all the connections between the TCU and the thyristor • monitoring of the optical transmission links
and snubber circuits are made via high impedances. Thus the • water leakage detection.
risk of an open circuit occurring in the snubber circuit is re-
duced, as well as the risk of overheating of the TCU. The monitoring of the snubber circuit is realised by meas-
To make the protective firing dependent on the operation uring the RC time upon firing of the thyristor. Since the ca-
of the TCU means that, in the event of a failure in the snubber pacitors are of dry-type, “self-healing” design, a fault in the
circuit or in the TCU, the result will be a short circuit of the capacitor will show up as a decrease in RC time, and a degra-
thyristor, and no further energy will be fed into the defective dation of the capacitor will be detected well ahead of a com-
position. plete failure. The resistive part of the snubber is built up us-
ing parallel resistors and thus a resistor failure will be detect- The diagnosis system has been based on the existing well
ed as an increase in RC time. proven design of thyristor valves using ETTs and TCUs and
The temperature of the heat sink of each thyristor is meas- by add-on state-of-the-art monitoring circuits.
ured continuously. The highest thyristor temperatures will Light-triggered thyristors are at present used by ABB only
determine the status of the valve and provide exact informa- in applications where electrically triggered thyristors cannot
tion on the overload capability at actual ambient conditions. be used for technical reasons.
The fire barrier under each thyristor module is designed to
collect water in case of a leak. The collected water is detected VIII. REFERENCES
by a sensor and a signal is sent to the VBE. The position of a
leak can thus be located with precision on six thyristors. [1] Bo E. Danielsson, “HVDC valves with light-triggered thyristors”,
Since parts of the monitoring sequence are performed at Power Semiconductor Devices and Circuits, Plenum Press, New York
1992, pp239-269.
reduced light levels in the optical systems the margins for
safe operation of the firing system are monitored for each
optical link. IV. BIOGRAPHIES
This monitoring system can easily be extended to other
Urban Åström was born in Njurunda, Sweden in 1946. He received his
measurements as well, such as local smoke detection, etc. M.Sc. degree in physical engineering and B.Sc. degree in astronomy from
the University of Uppsala, Sweden in 1973. In 1974 he joined ASEA AB’s
VII. SUMMARY HVDC department and worked with design and development of control
equipment, thyristor valves and valve cooling. In 1978 he joined the trans-
former department and worked with design of converter transformers for
Different solutions for thyristor triggering and monitoring HVDC. In 1986 he joined the HQ/NEH HVDC project team, being respon-
have been analysed: The BBC design, the ASEA design for sible for converter equipment. From 1989 to 1995 he was manager of the
electrically triggered thyristors, the ASEA design for light- HVDC Project Engineering Development department, and since 1995 he
triggered thyristors and the ABB design. Experience from the has managed the Converter Valve Development department.
different types of thyristor control forms the basis for future Bo E. Danielsson was born in Örebro, Sweden, on June 21, 1941. He
received his B.Sc. in physics from the University of Lund, Sweden, in 1969,
ABB design. and his Ph. D. in solid state electronics from Chalmers University of Tech-
The electrically triggered design used by ABB has proved nology, Sweden, in 1982.
to have very high reliability. The main principles in the valve From 1971 to 1986, he worked with high power thyristors at ASEA Power
design are: Semiconductor Department in Västerås, Sweden. His experience covers basic
development, electrical and mechanical design and production technique,
• Full redundancy for each single component in the valve and he has worked as a manager in all these areas. In 1986, he joined the
• All the monitoring and protections in the valve act HVDC division at ABB Power Systems in Ludvika, Sweden. There he
independently on each thyristor position worked as the manager of thyristor valve development, and since 1991 has
• Fail-safe design, that is no component failure will cause operated as Senior Specialist in power semiconductor applications.
Dr. Danielsson has given several courses in power semiconductor phys-
a major consequential failure. ics at Chalmers University of Technology and the Royal Institute of Tech-
nology in Sweden. He is a member of NIST WG on Model Validation.
To meet requirements from clients for modern power equip- Krister Nyberg was born in Borlänge in 1948. He received his B.Sc.
ment, a diagnosis system for thyristor valves has been devel- degree in electrical engineering from Mälardalens Institute of Technology
in Sweden in 1987. In 1973 he joined ASEA AB’s HVDC department and
oped. This system includes the following features: worked with the design and development of control equipment. Since 1991
• Advance information on changes in snubber circuit he has been manager of the HVDC Control System Development depart-
components ment.
• On-line information on changes in the margins in the
optical transmission links
• Immediate detection and exact localisation of small
water leaks
• Exact information on the overload capability of the
converter in actual conditions.