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U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Compact dc link

Technical Report ·
OSTI ID:5079910
 [1]
  1. General Electric Co., Malvern, PA (United States)

The EPRI Compact Substation Project (a HVDC Converter Station) was developed, designed, and constructed per EPRI Agreement RP213. In December 1983, the converter station operated at its rating (100 MW power transmission and 300 kV dc bias plus 100 kV operating voltage). From January to May 1984, the converter station operated at various power transmission levels. Operation was intermittent due to a randomly occurring voltage breakdown. The voltage breakdown was isolated to the steel tanks containing the thyristor valves in an SF{sub 6} environment. The type of insulators stressed within the valve tanks were: (1) the epoxy cone shape insulators providing an interface to the bus entering the valve tank; (2) epoxy fiberglass hydraulic columns for the flow of the R113 refrigerant to and from the thyristor valves; and (3) the epoxy fiberglass support columns supporting the thyristor valves from the floor of the valve tank. The cause of the randomly occurring breakdown was investigated and determined to be the epoxy fiberglass support columns. The random dielectric breakdowns were due to excessive voltage gradients existing at the epoxy fiberglass support columns. This probably was caused by the misplacement of an internal insert within the column with respect to an external shield on the column. The cost and time to retrofit the support columns outweighed the benefits expected from resuming the project. Consequently, work was terminated and the equipment disassembled. Examination of the epoxy fiberglass support columns revealed several arcing tracks along the inside surface confirming the earlier hypothesis. 53 figs., 32 tabs.

Research Organization:
Electric Power Research Inst., Palo Alto, CA (United States); General Electric Co., Malvern, PA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
EPRI; Electric Power Research Inst., Palo Alto, CA (United States)
OSTI ID:
5079910
Report Number(s):
EPRI-EL-7101
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English