Deep Analysis and Comparison Study of Solid-State Circuit Breakers for DC Microgrid Protection

Future energy systems face the fast growth of direct current (DC) in renewable power generation, energy storage, and loads. DC microgrids indicate a promising solution for efficiency, reliability and low cost to accommodate renewable energy and energy storage. Safety is considered the priority to be investigated since the industry currently lacks standards in DC fault detection and protection. DC does not show zero-crossing leading to difficulty for circuit-breaking high current. The paper focuses on the technology and studies the latest development of protection devices, mainly the solid-state circuit breakers for DC applications. The classification, simulation, and comparison presented in this paper are valuable leading to further research and development of the state-of-art protection devices that support the trend of DC microgrids.