A DC Solid-State Current Limiter With Adaptive Current-Limiting Ability

The proportion of DC power generation, transmission, and distribution in power systems is continuously increasing. Currently, fault protection in DC power systems is an attractive yet difficult research topic. In this paper, a DC solid-state current limiter with adaptive current-limiting ability is proposed. The basic topology and the working principle of the proposed current limiter are presented. Then, an improved topology with bidirectional current-limiting and reactor self-bypass capacity is realized. In order to achieve adaptive current-limiting, a multi-stage cascaded structure of the proposed current limiter is studied. The single-stage current-limiting ability and multi-stage adaptive current-limiting ability of the current limiter in DC power systems are verified by simulations. Furthermore, the proposed current limiter topology is verified by hardware-in-the-loop test bench. Corresponding results show that the proposed current limiter can reduce the influence of reactor on the dynamic characteristics in DC power systems, and effectively suppress the rapid rise of DC fault currents at fault time.