A double-break current injection vacuum DCCB: Principle and analysis

To improve the breaking performances of current injection vacuum DC circuit breaker (DCCB), a double-break current injection DCCB proposed. The opening moments of the two breaks are not simultaneously, one of the breaks is arc breaking, which is used for cut off the fault current, and the other is non-arc breaking, which is used to enhance the transient recovery voltage (TRV) withstand capability. During the interruption process, let the arc-breaking contact first open, the contact starts to separate and produce arcs, then the pre-charged capacitor injects a reverse current to extinguish the arc, meanwhile, the current commutation of non-arc-breaking contact is realized by a coupling inductor. In addition, freewheeling diodes connected in parallel at the contacts to delay the occurrence of transient recovery voltage, thereby further increasing the voltage withstand capability of the CB. The principle and analysis of proposed DCCB scheme are discussed. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed DCCB scheme is verified by simulation (c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).