Evaluation Method for Reverse Recovery Characteristics of Thyristors Based on Charge Measurement

Abstract The change of operation mode of the HVDC project causes a change of the external characteristic of the converter valve, and the reverse recovery characteristic of the thyristor inside the converter valve changes accordingly. Therefore, the reverse recovery charge measurement values of thyristors under different operating conditions cannot be directly compared, and the status of thyristors cannot be evaluated online. Therefore, a method of measuring the reverse recovery charge of series thyristor based on the turn-off voltage is presented in this paper. Then, the operation mode of the HVDC project is analyzed, and the external characteristics of the converter valve under different operation modes are discussed. Secondly, the external factors that affect the reverse recovery characteristics of thyristors are analyzed essentially, and the relationship between the external factors and the external characteristics of the converter valve is discussed. A reverse recovery charge model considering external factors is established, and a method to reduce the error is proposed. Finally, the reverse-recovery charge normalization coefficient is derived for the normalization of the measured values in different working conditions. Based on the charge online measurement method and the normalization method proposed in this paper, the reverse-recovery characteristic evaluation method of the thyristor is proposed, and the evaluation steps are introduced.