IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - March/April 2014 - 96

for thyristors. HVdc thyristor valve
technology has come a long way; the
Eel River valve would need fewer than
20 thyristors in place of the 200 used
in 1972. Thyristors with voltage ratings as high as 9 kV are in operation,
and thyristors with 12-kV blocking
capability have been developed. The
power-handling capability of the thyristor converter bridge (six-pulse) has
seen a phenomenal rise; it has reached
as high as 750 MW from a mere 80 MW
in 1972, which is approximately three
times more than what a mercury-arc
valve bridge could handle previously
(see Table 1).

Conclusion
The valve, which blocks and conducts
current periodically, is truly the heart
of HVdc. There were complex factors
associated with mercury-arc valves
that didn't permit the precise prediction of its performance, whereas the
performance of thyristor valves can be
predicted with remarkable accuracy.
The advances in the solid-state valve
have made HVdc economically much
more competitive. As a consequence,
more and more HVdc links have been
commissioned, and many more are
being planned throughout the world.
There is an unending requirement for
improving the thyristor valve. It calls
for larger capacity thyristors, lower
losses, lower maintenance, and higher

96

ieee power & energy magazine

reliability. The use of power electronics in power systems is increasing
significantly with thyristor capability.
In the future, ac-dc combinations will
make the most efficient use of renewable energy without affecting the environment. Silicon is the best medium
for the conditioning of electrical
power into usable form. It is extraordinarily stable and has long life when
processed and used properly.

For Further Reading
J. D. Mccoll, "Ac/Dc: One man's
view," Proc. Inst. Elec. Electron., vol.
131, pt. A, no. l, pp. 38-43, Jan. 1984.
T. Wolpert, "Rectifier technology development during the last thirty years,"
in Proc. 9th Int. Telecommunications
Energy Conf. (INTELEC'87), Stockholm, Sweden, pp. 40-47, 1987.
U. Lamm, "Mercury-arc valves for
high-voltage d.c. transmission," Proc.
Inst. Elec. Electron., vol. 111, no. 10,
pp. 1747-1753, Oct. 1964.
H. P. Lips, "Technology trends for
HVDc thyristor valves," in Proc.
Int. Conf. Power System Technology
(POWERCON), 1998, pp. 451-455.
A. M. Nekrasov and A.V. Posse,
"Work done in the Soviet Union on
high-voltage long-distance dc power
transmission," AIEE Trans. Power Apparatus Syst., pt. III, vol. 78, pp. 515-
521, Aug. 1959.

H. Martensson, "History of high voltage dc transmission," IEEE Power Eng.
Rev., vol. 4, no. 7, pp. 16-17, July 1984.
c. G. Dewey, F. J. Ellert, T. H. Lee,
and c. H. Titus, "Development of experimental 20-kV, 36-MW solid-state
converters for HVDc systems," IEEE
Trans. Power. App. Syst., vol. 87, no. 4,
pp. 1058-1066, April 1968.
S. M. Sze, "Semiconductor device
development in the 1970s and 1980s-A
perspective," Proc. IEEE, vol. 69, no. 9,
pp. 1121-1131, Sept. 1981.
A. Ekstrom and L. Eklund, "HVDc
thyristor valve development," IEEE
Trans. Power Electron., vol. 2, no. 3,
pp. 177-185, July 1987.
H. Stomberg, B. Abrahamsson, and
O. Saksvik, "Modern HVDc thyristor valves," Proc. ICEE 1996, Beijing,
china, pp. 606-610.
H. Iwamoto, T. Nakagawa, F. Tokunoh, A. Tada, Y. Yamaguchi, M. Yamamoto, and K. Satoh, "12 kV, 1,000 A
thyristor," in Proc. Int. Symp. Power
Semiconductor Devices & ICs, Tokyo,
Japan, 1990, pp. 283-288.
M. Hoffman and K. P. Leowald, "A
thyristor valve for a peak blocking voltage of 120 kV," Siemens Rev., vol. 35,
no. 11, pp. 423-426, 1968.
E. Anwander and P. Etter, "Thyristor converter valve for 100-kV dc
bridge voltage," Brown Boveri Rev.,
vol. 56, no. 2, pp. 79-88, 1969.
p&e

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