A novel pilot protection principle based on modulus traveling-wave currents for voltage-sourced converter based high voltage direct current (VSC-HVDC) transmission lines

Protection for transmission lines is one of crucial problems that urgently to be solved in constructing the future high-voltage and large-capacity voltage-sourced converter based high voltage direct current (VSC-HVDC) systems. In order to prevent the DC line fault from deteriorating further due to the failure of main protection, a novel pilot protection principle for VSC-HVDC transmission lines is proposed in this paper. The proposed protection principle is based on characteristics of modulus traveling-wave (TW) currents. Firstly, the protection starting-up criterion is constructed by using the absolute value of the 1-mode TW current gradient. Secondly, the fault section identification is realized by comparing the polarities of wavelet transform modulus maxima (WTMM) of 1-mode initial TW currents acquired from both terminals of the DC line. Then, the selection of fault line is actualized according to the polarity of WTMM of local 0-mode initial reverse TW current. A four-terminal VSC-based DC grid electromagnetic transient model based on the actual engineering parameters is built to assess the performance of the proposed pilot protection principle. Simulation results for different cases prove that the proposed pilot protection principle is excellent in reliability, selectivity, and robustness. Moreover, the data synchronization is not required seriously. Therefore, the proposed novel pilot protection principle can be used as a relatively perfect backup protection for VSC-HVDC transmission lines.