Use of a Tubular Linear Induction Motor in a HVDC Breaker

The increasing development of the energy harvesting from remote renewable resources (solar cells in deserts or off-shore wind plants) is producing a great interest in multi-terminal high voltage direct current (HVDC) grids. The adoption of this technology relies on the existence of efficient and robust breakers. As known, the interruption of a direct current is harder than an alternate one, because of the absence of a natural zero of the current and because of the typical low impedance of DC systems. This requires the development of ad hoc designs of ultra-fast actuators capable to interrupt direct currents at high values of voltage. The aim of this work is to investigate the use of a tubular linear induction motor for this purpose.