FAST RESPONSE SOLID-STATE ON LOADTRANSFORl$lERSTAP-CHANGER

J Faiz H Javidnia

University of Tehran. Iran University of Tabriz. Iran

ABSTRACT a typical mechanical tap changer in which tap

changing procedure from tap 2 lo tap 3 has been shown
in live stages. Disadvantage of the mechanical tap
This paper presents a new method for on-load t a p changers is long tap changing time; therefore they may
changing of power transformers using solid state and be only used for steady-state voltage control of power
vacuum- switches The tapchanging system is system.
comprised of solid-state devices (for example GTOs).
fast re$onse circuit breaker (for example vacuum
intcrrupters) and a number of transformer taps. In this
method GTOs and vacuum switches with suitable on-
off timing makes it possible to change taps Over a short
period. Simulation resuits show that changing two
adjacent taps takes less than 100m.i which is very
Y-
4

shorter that 5s required for the corresponding change

by the mechanical tap-changers.
iii T.oa21nd 3

INTRODUCTION

Tapchanging is used extensively in a wide variety of

electrical inductive apparatus. In order to supply high
qualih elcctrical energy to the users. electrical power
Fig. 1. A typical mechanical tap changer (1)
utilities apply voltage regulation techniques. Generally,
loltage. regulation objects are the voltage regulation
Another type of tap changers are solid-state tap
over the required limits. control of active and reactive
1 (%5-%lO), daily (%3-%5) and short changers (4-6). In this type of tap changcn gaic
controlled devices, such as conventional thynstors or
adjustment versus load variations (1).
gate turn-off thyristors (GTO)are used. A control
This is done by adjkting the turns-ratio or phase angle device' triggers predetermined groups of the thyristor
le the device is serving load. Most of
pairs to connect or bypass certain ones of the tap
methods in use utilize a witching
winding sections and thereby provide a wide range of
tely connect various sections of one
output voltage. One of the drawbacks of thesc tap
cal inductive apparatus circuit. At
changers is the harmonic contents of the output voltagc
present mechanical contact witch is extensively used.
in continuous change of the volmge. In (6)number of
required solid-state switches reduced into 50%.
However use of this method needs accurate witching
time, which leads to a complicated control system. 8

or secondary winding or both to increase the tap range
of tlic clcctrid inductive apparatus at the lowest cost.
Depending on rated power and voltage of transformer
and voltage regulation level. various circuits are used in
tap changers; some of them have been introduced in (2)
and (3) and their switching patterns are given. To
prevent-the shon circuit of different taps a pro*r
resistanq: or.reactance is used which enters into f3e
circuit when tap is changing. Thus,'the load cumnt
passes through the resistor or reactor (2). Fig. 1 shows
In general, the major drawbacks of these tap changers
are high copper losses, low reliability and e.xpensive
system due to several circuits required for protection
and commutation of the thyristors. Therefore, these tap
cbngersarenot in common use. and only for some
particular cases are applicable.
In this paper a new scheme first introduced in (7) is
analyzed and its performancc is described. In this
scheme. GTO switches are used to change the taps and
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Power Electronics Md Variable Speed Drives, 18-19 September 21WaConference Publication No. 475 Q IEE 2000

355
by switching on and off the vacuum switches at the line current. After tap changing. the current transfers
instant of zero current. the load current is transferred from the semiconductor switch to its parallel vacuum
from one tap to other taps and the output voltage is switch. In order to protect the semiconductor switches
regulated over a short period. from possible faults occurring on the transformer, the
sciiiiconduaor switches are disconnected from
transformcr minding by the selector after tap-changing
NEW TAP-CHANGER SCHEME AND ITS takes place.
PERFORMANCE

High voltage (HV) winding of transformer and required

switches for tap changing of the proposed scheme has
been shown in Fig. 2. The leakage inductance and V2=nV
resistance of secondary winding are divided between
taps based on the number of tum ratio. SA. SB and Sc
are AC solid-slate switches. The reason for laking into
account tliree taps is the limitations of circuit
simulation software and also for simplicity. Of course, ROAD
iiicrease of tap number is possible and inay not change LLOAD
the principle. The details of the proposed tap changer
are described in the following parts.

Selector

Circuit topology of the selector is similar to the

conventional tap changers except that this selector's
response is faster. For this purpose, contacts in the oil-
tank are replaced by vacuum intempters incorporated
with a two-position electromagnetic actuator. The Fig. 2. Circuit diagram of tap changer
vacuum interrupters have high level power transfer
capability and long life and are very convenient for this
application. By applylng a current pulse to two coils, AC Semiconductor Switches
the contacts of the vacuum switch will be on and off.
depending on the corresponding coils. After position
Generally in power systems h g h efficiency
change of the switch, it is possible to keep switch in
new position by a permanent magnet and holding
transmission line has almost unip power factor
Although. if a fast tap changer is used to damp the
torque is also applied on it. Standards indicate that the
vacuutp switches must be able to switch off the fault oscillation occurred due to a fault, it must be able
operate over all power factors and pass the current in
current in two cycles. In the present work, the vacuum
two directions. One of the first attempts to design
switches are switched on and off when the current
electronic tap changers is the use of anti-parallel
passes zero. Thus, there is no electric arc within the
switch and switch on and off times depend only on the thyristors as proper switches. In such designs, the
current may be not in-phase with the voltage; ths may
time constant of the mechanical drive qstem of the
lead to the switching off the forward bias thyristor,
contacts. This position change takes about 20
which can damage the thyristor. To prevent such event
milliseconds. In the simulation, the vacuum
the load power factor is measured and the instants of
interrupters' off time has been taken to be 20ms, which
the thyristor switching is determined corresponding to
is equivalent to one period at frequency of 5OHz.
the measured power factor. The principle of this has
been described in details in (6). A proper AC switclies
strudure, recommended for tapchanger, is shown in
Diverter
Fig. 4. One of the configurations is anti-parallel and the
other is bridge configuration.
In order to improve the reliability of the switches. two
Fig. 3 shows the structure of the proposed diverter,
GTOs in each current passing path may be employed.
consisting of two semiconductor switches A and B,
which are esplained, in next part. Each switch is
GTO switches with capacity of 2kA are now available
(8) and there is no need to use two parallel switches in
connected between the selector output leads and neutral
each path. However, it is recommended that the
or middle point of the star connection. VA and VB are
nominal current of the semiconductor switches are
vacuum switches connected in parallel \ k i t h switches A
chosen twice the actual cumnt for reliability.
rind B. Therefore: the vacuum switches do not break the

356
Obviously, if one semiconductor switch can bc used in
each current path. there will not be difficulty of
paralleling process of two elemcnts.
from from
selector Seleclor
Fig. 3. Diverter (7)
b vacuum switch to semiconductor switch takes feu
Fig. 4. AC semiconductor switches (a) Anti-parallel
configuration (b) Bridge configuration
Based on the data given by manufacturer, switch-off
time of a GTO switch with average current of 55QAis
1Sps (9). In the present work. switch-off time for GTO
IS considered equal to 3Qps. which is a reasonable time.
Voltagc drop duringaon time of GTO is between 3V and
jV, which is negligble compared to the high voltage of
transformer.
Auxiliary Current Diverter
An mmiliary current diverter is used to transfer current
of a vacuum switch to its parallel semiconductor
switch. This amdiary divener has been shown for
switches A and V, in Fig. 5 . It consists of a low-power
ausiliaq transformer with tum ratio of 1:20, a
357
semiconductor switch. and a IkV varistor. During
steadystate operation. vacuum switch V A and
semiconductor switch C conduct. Therefore. phase
current passes through the primary of the ausiliary
transformer The transformer reduces the current
through switch C and voltage drop on the s ~ i t c l to
l
1.20. Assume 5V voltage drop on GTO, thus the
transformer prinlary drop u i l l be 0.2SV.
Fig. 5. Auxiliary current diverter (7)
At the beginning of the tap changing process, phase
current must be transfer from switch VA to switch A.
To do this, switch C is off and switch A is on.
secondary current of transformer passes through
varistor and 1kV induces on the secondary and 50V on
the primary. This Joltage is in the path of switch VA
and changes the current path and passes through the
low resistance path. Transfer of the current from
seconds. M e r completing current transfer, when
current does not pass vacuum switch, it is switched off.
In Fig. 2. SC indicates the semiconductor switch C in
SPICE sofluare.
In order to transfer each tap to the adjacent tap. a
similar snitching pattern can be used. For instance,
Fig. 6 shows the transfer from tap S2 to tap S 1. As this
figure indicates, first S1 is switched on, since %.B and
SB are off, the current does not pass through SI.At the
first instant of zero current, SA on and Sc off which
leads to transferring current from %A and SA. In such
a case, current of switch %.A is zero and this switch is
easily off. At the zero current instant and after complete
switch-off of SVA, switch SA is off and SB is on. This
causes transferring transformer current from SI and
SB. Then, Svg is switched-off and S c is svitched-on,
this transfers output current of transformer from S1 to
Sw.The last stage is the switching-off S2. which
completes the tap changing process.
 ox ......................
om:................. :..
mlllrsn
.........................
* ........................
ow' ,
L. .................
ow .,
O R - . ................ - L .................
s,
ow ......................... ................ ,
0.I- ............
L

Fig. 6. Switching time p t t e m for tap changing from S2

to s 1
[ ', \
I

SIMULATION RESULTS 1

I
\
-1 / I

Circuit shown in Fig. 2 is simulated by Pspice.

Parameters of the proposed transformer are given in
Table 1. Transformer supplies 4OkVA with lagging
poucr factor 0.8 load. n is assumed 20%. In such a
case. output voltages of transformer are 2000.2400 and
1600 V. It is assumed that the transformer used in the
proposed current diverter is ideal; in fact two linear
inductances habring approdmatety unit coupling
coefficient has been employed. Also a resistance has
been replaced instead of varistor used in (7). The
Gmulation results show that by a proper selection of the
resistance, tap changing may be properly done.
4onu 501u 6Oms
(b) Time
Fig. 7. Output voltage of transformer
Load current wavefonn has been s h o m in Fig. 8. As
seen there in no transient on it and user does not realize
the tap changing process. Current of semiconductor
switch Sc has been represented in Fig. 9.Before and
after tap changing, tap has a small current and during
two taps changing. this switch is switch-off and current
does not pass through it. Fig. 10 exhibits current of
semiconductor witch Sg. The current passing this
semiconductor switch depends upon the auxiliary
transformer characteristics and in the tap changer
design process, care must be made in the selection of
this low-power transformer.

I RI=0.02R I , R2=0.5R I CONCLUSIONS

A new scheme has been studied and simulated for tap

Gc=2mS
The simulation results based on the switching pattem
of Fig. 6,in tapchanging from S2 to S1 has been
shown in Fig. 7. Fig. 7a shows the output voltage of
transformer; its smaller time-intend ' has been
represented in Fig. 7b. As seen, tap changing is done at
t=52ms which leads to a sudden change of the output
voltage.
changing of transformers. The simulation results
indicate that tap changing using this method is 50
times faster that the corresponding on-load mechanical
tap changers. In the worst case, changing one tap to the
other tap takes 100ms; the corresponding time in
mechanical tap changer is about 5s. The transient
currents of the switches have no effect on the load
current and its peak value is standed by the switches.
When an actual auxiliary transformer is proposed,
current of GTO and vacuum switch is considerably
larger than the ideal case. This may be assigned to the
saturation of the core.

358
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