Fault Current Behavior of MMC With the First Blocking Method.

This paper introduces the fault current behavior of full-bridge modular multilevel converters (MMCs) and hybrid MMCs, with a consideration of a non-simultaneous blocking of the two half-bridges in each sub-module. In order to protect insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBTs) in the full-bridge sub-module, both sides of a full-bridge sub-module are not blocked at the same time point. It is assumed that the first blocking of both sides is random in each sub-module, so there are many possible voltages in each arm after the first blocking. Because of this, there are also many possible fault current slopes after the first blocking. The influence of this sequential blocking on the maximum fault current is analyzed in the study. This paper also determines the threshold current, which has to be decreased due to this phenomenon. An optimization method of threshold current is also proposed. Other new MMC sub-modules can also use this new blocking method to reduce the stress of IGBTs, whose working principle is also introduced in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]