Optimisation of commutation circuit parameters for DC vacuum circuit breakers

As the environmental problems caused by the consumption of the non-renewable fossil energy are getting increasingly serious, the new energy power generation has received wide attentions. Multi-terminal high voltage DC (HVDC) transmission is one of the key technologies for improving the reliability and stability of new energy power generations. Besides, HVDC circuit breakers (CBs) become the bottleneck of the development and application for multi-terminal HVDC transmission power systems. Here, the active DC vacuum circuit breaker (VCB) is taken as the research object. Meanwhile, the optimisation design of the commutation circuit for the DC VCB is realised. According to Kirchhoff's law, the genetic algorithm is used to calculate the commutation parameters under different optimisation objectives, to obtain the lowest cost and the shortest sheath development time. Based on the software package MATLAB, the simulations and analyses of different optimisation objectives and parameters are carried out. Through the comparative analyses of the two optimisation objectives, the relationships between the development time of the sheath gap and the cost have been obtained.