DC Circuit Breaker: A Comprehensive Review of Solid State Topologies

Abstract

Due to the advantages of DC microgrid and with the advancement of power electronics, DC microgrid is getting immense attention in the field of research. Protection and hereafter the protective devices for the microgrid application are two vital areas that need to be explored and developed further. However, developing appropriate protective devices like DC circuit breaker (DCCB) possesses a lot of challenges. The main challenge is to interrupt a current which does not have a natural zero crossing like AC current has. Different types of DC circuit breaker topologies such as Mechanical, Solid state, Hybrid, Z-source and some modified versions of these topologies have been proposed in the literature. In this paper, different types of DCCB topologies will be discussed and their advantages and limitations will be thoroughly investigated with a special focus to solid state based topologies.