Current Oscillation Phenomenon of MMC based on IGCT and Fast Recovery Diode with High Surge Current Capability for HVDC Application

Integrated gate commutated thyristor (IGCT) has low loss, low cost, and high reliability in the application of modular multilevel converter (MMC). However, due to the special turn- off process of IGCT, the commutation transient is very different for IGCT in MMC. This letter reveals a current oscillation phenomenon of MMC based on IGCT and fast recovery diode (FRD). Especially, this oscillation effect becomes apparent when the FRD with high surge current capability is employed in MMC because of high junction capacitance and high stray inductance, which will threaten the safe operation of the system. This letter analyzes the current oscillation mechanism and gives the current oscillation modeling. In addition, through detailed tests under various stray inductances, the specific stray inductance range that can cause large current oscillation is obtained and an optimized inductance parameter of IGCT-MMC is proposed. The experiments show that the safe operation area of IGCT in MMC can be guaranteed maximally with the optimized parameter.