HVDC Transmission Systems
Five-lecture course by Dr. Ram Adapa of EPRI on high-voltage direct-current transmission. The course compares AC and DC transmission, develops HVDC system components and configurations, explains the physics of AC and DC corona, and evaluates converting existing AC lines to DC service.
Objectives
- Compare the technical, economic, operational, and environmental characteristics of HVAC and HVDC transmission.
- Identify the converters, smoothing reactors, harmonic filters, reactive-power supplies, electrodes, DC lines, and circuit breakers used in an HVDC link.
- Distinguish back-to-back, overhead-line, cable, monopolar, bipolar, and other HVDC system configurations.
- Explain corona and air-insulation phenomena in AC and DC transmission systems.
- Evaluate the opportunities, constraints, and benefits of converting an existing AC transmission line to DC operation.
Modules
Description: Introduces HVDC transmission through an AC-versus-DC comparison. It covers transmission applications, costs and losses, controllability, special applications, and the principal components of an HVDC transmission system.
Description: Examines HVDC system configurations, including back-to-back links, point-to-point overhead lines and submarine cables, monopolar and bipolar links, multiterminal links, and DC grids.
Description: Explains the air-insulation and discharge physics that govern corona on high-voltage AC and DC lines, including ionization, avalanche development, corona modes, gap discharges, and their effects on line design and operation.
Description: Compares HVDC and HVAC transmission and develops the engineering implications of converting an existing AC line to DC, including structures, conductors, insulators, terminal converter stations, voltage limits, current limits, and configuration choices.
Description: Summarizes the advantages and constraints of AC-to-DC conversion: increased power flow, lower losses, controllable power transfer, limited short-circuit current, right-of-way benefits, terminal-station costs, and practical transmission-line examples.