814
2, APRIL 2009
Analysis of Converter Transformer Failure
in HVDC Systems and Possible Solutions
G. Bhuvaneswari, Senior Member, IEEE, and B. C. Mahanta
Abstract—An HVDC transmission system has a converter trans-
former as one of its main components. The failure of the converter
transformer is one of the major concerns for electric power utili-
ties all over the world. Invariably, the top portions of the secondary
windings of the converter transformers fail whereas the primaries
are left unaffected. In this paper, an effort has been made to an-
alyze the causes for these failures by means of modeling a prac-
tical HVDC system existing in India which ties up Talcher and
Kolar and has a length of 1368 km. The modeling and analysis
have been carried out in the MATLAB/SIMULINK environment.
Based on the analysis, possible solutions for this problem have been
suggested, such as providing passive filters on the secondary wind-
ings of the converter transformer, connecting a parallel capacitor
on the dc side of the converter and R-C snubbers across the sec-
ondary windings. The suggested solutions have been compared to
bring out their relative merits and demerits.
Index Terms—Commutation overlap, converter transformer
failure, harmonics, HVDC system.
I. INTRODUCTION
D UE to the evolution of power semiconductor devices,
HVDC transmission has been gaining popularity ever
since its first commercial operation in 1954. The advent of
HVDC technology [1] has been so rapid that it is widely
applied all over the world for bulk power transmission over
long distances. It is popularly employed for interconnecting
two asynchronous systems not only through overhead lines
but also through submarine cables. The power supply is made
available to islands and remote places by means of HVDC
transmission. Due to revolutionary progress in flexible ac
transmission systems (FACTS) devices [2], HVAC is emerging
as a tough competitor of the power carrier to HVDC. But still,
the HVDC transmission system has an edge over HVAC, due to
the advent of higher capacity power-electronics devices, such
as insulated-gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs), integrated-gate
commutated thyristors (IGCTs), metal–oxide semiconductor
field-effect transistors (MOSFETs), and gate turnoff thyristors
(GTOs). But most of the HVDC stations still use the thyristor
Manuscript received July 16, 2007; revised October 25, 2007. Current version
published March 25, 2009. Paper no. TPWRD-00413-2007.
G. Bhuvaneswari is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, In-
dian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, New Delhi 110016, India (e-mail:
bhuvan@ee.iitd.ac.in).
B. C. Mahanta is with NTPC Ltd., Talcher, Orissa 759101, India (e-mail:
bcmahanta@yahoo.co.in).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRD.2009.2014271
0885-8977/$25.00 © 2009 IEEE
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 24, NO.
as the switching device for the converter-inverter circuit.
Voltage-source converters (VSCs) [3], which use self-commu-
tating devices such as IGBTs or GTOs, are increasingly being
used for HVDC transmission systems with limited power-han-
dling capacity known as “HVDC Lite.” These do not cause any
power-quality (PQ) problems. HVDC systems are also gaining
importance because of the increased use of renewable energy
resources for power generation. HVDC systems are used to
transmit electricity from remotely located nonconventional
energy sources to thickly populated cities. Even in conventional
power stations, it is easier to transmit electricity by HVDC
from a remotely located power station closer to the location
of the coal or natural gas, rather than to set up a power station
closer to the thickly populated city and to transport coal from
remotely located coal mines.
The converter transformer is one piece of vital equipment in
the HVDC transmission system. It serves as the isolating de-
vice between the power transformer and the dc link and steps
down the voltage as required by the thyristor converters. It is
equipped with onload tap changers on the primary side to main-
tain the ac voltage supplied to the thyristor converters constant
at all conditions. But frequent failure of the converter trans-
former is a major cause for concern to the electric power utili-
ties all over the world. Invariably, it is found that the secondary
winding of the converter transformer is the one that fails. Gener-
ally, 12 pulse thyristor converters are employed in HVDC trans-
mission to eliminate the fifth and seventh harmonics and this is
achieved by connecting the secondary windings in Y- fashion
to introduce a 30 phase shift. But the fifth and seventh har-
monics are very much present in the secondary windings al-
though they are absent in the primary side. The secondary wind-
ings should have been designed to withstand these harmonic
contents. The failure analysis of HVDC systems reported by
CIGRE [4] states that out of 22 failures in the last few years,
14 failures were secondary winding failures. In India, almost all
failures have taken place on the secondary windings of the con-
verter transformers. Such failures have been attributed to corro-
sive oil-forming copper sulphide sediments, voltage transients
arising during the commutation process, and temperature rise. It
has also been suggested that repetitive voltage transients initiate
partial discharge and eventually result in the failure of the con-
verter transformer [5], [6]. The harmonic leakage fluxes cause
thermal problems in the converter transformer which may lead
to its failure as discussed in [7]. Grant and McDermid in [8]
stated that a converter transformer shows signs of insulation
degradation due to thermal aging after a few decades of normal
operation. In this paper, an effort has been made to analyze the
HVDC system from an electrical power engineer’s point of view
BHUVANESWARI AND MAHANTA: ANALYSIS OF CONVERTER TRANSFORMER FAILURE
Fig. 1. Schematic of the converter transformer connection.
to find out the root cause for the failure of the converter trans-
former secondary. Some solutions have also been suggested to
eliminate these problems.
II. SYSTEM CONFIGURATION
In the present scenario, converter transformers are made up
of single-phase—three winding transformer units. The primary
sides are connected in star with grounded neutral. Secondary
windings of the converter transformers are connected in Y-
to achieve a 30 phase shift so that the 12-pulse thyristor con-
verters can be fed. Fig. 1 shows the schematic of the converter
transformer connections. Two six-pulse thyristor groups are
connected in series so that each converter carries the full-load
dc-link current and develops half the dc-link voltage. Due to
the 12-pulse thyristor converter operations, the 11th, 13th,
23rd, and 25th harmonics are generated in the source side of
the converter. Hence, the converter acts as a harmonic current
source, thus polluting the power supply. But the converters
generate 12th, 24th, and 36th harmonic voltages on the dc side.
Generally, passive harmonic filters are installed on the source
side to mitigate these harmonics and to supply the reactive
power required by the converters at fundamental frequency.
Similar passive filters are also connected on the dc side to
mitigate harmonics. These filters are generally of the single or
double tuned type. Some of the stations are employing active
filters on the dc side of the converters. But to the authors’ best
knowledge, only one station (the Tjele converter station in
Denmark) has employed active filters on the ac side all over the
world [9].
III. MODELING AND ANALYSIS
The Talcher–Kolar HVDC line has been taken as the refer-
ence model for analysis of the secondary winding harmonics
and their effects on the converter transformer. In this HVDC
system, 2000 MW of power is transmitted through the bipolar
link. Talcher, situated on the eastern coast of India, is the source
side of this bipolar link and Kolar on the south of India is the
receiving end of the link. The total length of this HVDC trans-
mission line is 1368 km and it is the second longest HVDC
815
line to date in the world. The NTPC Kaniha Station, which
is the biggest power station in India, has a total capacity of
3000 MW from which 2000-MW power is being tapped by this
HVDC line. The voltage rating is 500 kV and the full-load
current is 2000 A. Three single-phase transformers, each of the
three winding type, are connected in Y- -Y and two thyristor
converters are connected in series to achieve 12-pulse opera-
tions. Each leg in the bridge rectifier consists of 84 thyristors
in series for the upper portion and another set of 84 thyristors
for the lower portion. Each thyristor has an R-C snubber con-
nected across it with the values being 45 and 1.6 F, re-
spectively. So, each 12-pulse converter is made up of 84 12
1008 thyristor devices. Passive filters of the double tuned
type are connected in the source side to eliminate the 11th-,
13th-, 23rd-, and 25th-order current harmonics. In the dc side,
double-tuned passive filters are connected to eliminate the 12th-
and 24th-order voltage harmonics. The capacitors in the pas-
sive filters on the ac side act as the source of reactive power
for the converters at the fundamental frequency. The system is
modeled in Simulink using the power system blockset and var-
ious analyses are carried out. Fig. 2 depicts the schematic of this
Simulink [10] model.
IV. SIMULATION OF THE SYSTEM AT FULL LOAD
The system has been simulated at full load along with pas-
sive filters in service. The system parameters are presented in
the Appendix. It is observed that the source-side voltage and
current total harmonic distortions (%THD) are within 2%. But
when the voltages and currents in the secondary winding of the
converter transformer are analyzed, it is found that voltage and
current total harmonic distortion (THD) are greater than 20% at
a firing angle of 13 at the sending end rectifier. Hence, it can
be concluded that secondary windings are highly stressed with
these harmonic burdens of load. Also, it is observed from the
secondary winding voltage waveforms that the rate of change
of voltage with respect to time (dv/dt) across the secondary
winding is around 1.5 kV/ s and it is repetitive in nature.
These voltage transients are always present in the secondary
winding of the converter transformer and increase as the firing
angle increases. While designing the converter transformer,
these harmonics should have been taken into consideration and
graded insulation for the secondary winding should have been
put in place. However, the stress level to which these windings
is being subjected to is quite large as the voltage waveforms
indicate. This leads to the partial discharge phenomenon and,
thus, the failure of the converter transformer eventually be-
comes inevitable.
Since voltage THD, current THD, and the waveforms are
identical for star- and delta-connected transformer secondary
windings and for sending and receiving ends of the HVDC line,
the waveforms and the corresponding THD of the voltage and
currents at the sending end are presented here. The voltage and
current waveforms and their THD in the primary and secondary
side of the converter transformers at the sending end are shown
in Figs. 3–6, respectively. The corresponding THD values have
been tabulated in Table I.
816 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 24, NO. 2, APRIL 2009

Fig. 2. Schematic of the Simulink model of the Talcher–Kolar bipolar HVDC system.

Fig. 3. Waveforms at the primary of the converter transformer at the sending

end. (a) Voltage waveform. (b) Current waveform.

V. POSSIBLE CAUSES OF CONVERTER TRANSFORMER FAILURE

From the simulation results, it has been seen that the fol-
lowing two phenomena might be primary causes for converter
transformer failures.

A. High Harmonic Contents on the Secondary Winding of the

Converter Transformer
Both voltage and current THD are very high % in the Fig. 4. Harmonic spectrum of the voltage and current at the primary of the
secondary side of the converter transformer. Hence, the insula- converter transformer at the sending end. (a) Voltage THD. (b) Current THD.
BHUVANESWARI AND MAHANTA: ANALYSIS OF CONVERTER TRANSFORMER FAILURE
Fig. 5. Waveforms at the secondary of the converter transformer at the sending
end. (a) Voltage waveform. (b) Current waveform.
Fig. 6. Voltage and current THD at the secondary of the converter transformer
at the sending end. (a) Voltage THD, (b) Current THD.
tions of the secondary windings are severely stressed due to the
presence of these higher order harmonics.
817
TABLE I
VARIOUS THD AT FULL LOAD WITH THE EXISTING SYSTEM
B. High Commutation Overlap
The converter transformer source impedance is very high and,
hence, voltage transients are generated during the commuta-
tion process. These commutation voltage spikes that are seen
during the changeover of current from one phase to another,
are repetitive in nature. The rate of change of voltage (dv/dt)
across the secondary windings is observed to be 1.5 kV/ s.
These voltage transients [4] stress locally the part-to-part and
turn-to-turn insulation of the secondary windings of the con-
verter transformer. These transients increase as the firing angle
increases and degrade the insulations of the secondary wind-
ings of the converter transformers. CIGRE analysis [4] of the
converter transformer failure clearly describes that commuta-
tion voltage transients have been the major cause for converter
transformer failure in the recent past. As per Greenwood [11],
the transient surge effects across the transformer windings are
as follows.
1) Uneven voltage distribution across the winding: In the ini-
tial part of the transient period which exists for a few mi-
croseconds, no significant amount of current can penetrate
the winding due to inductance. Currents during this period
flow as capacitive currents in the winding. If there is no
proper insulation grading of the individual turns, then the
turns adjacent to the line will be highly stressed compared
with the turns closer to the neutral. As the voltage transients
in the converter transformer are repetitive in nature and if
there is any possibility of improper insulation grading in
the windings, then insulations will be stressed and prone to
failure in the long run even if this transient period is very
small.
2) Oscillations of the winding in space: During the second
time interval, this transient surge voltage distribution gives
rise to a complicated system of oscillations within the
winding. Here, inductive and resistive elements come into
the picture. Space harmonics are generated and oscillation
of the winding takes place. Since the surge is aperiodic
and contains a spectrum of frequencies when it strikes at
the transformer terminals, different frequencies penetrate
the winding at different velocities. These phenomenon
continue until the critical frequency of the winding.
Frequencies greater than this critical frequency cannot
penetrate the winding, and the winding behaves like a
filter.
Hence, both of these phenomena cause an immense amount
of stress to the insulations of the secondary winding of the con-
verter transformer. Insulation grading across the length of the
winding is carried out, but, in practice, it is difficult to achieve
optimal grading of the insulation according to the literature.
818
Fig. 7. Schematic of the capacitors connected to the dc side of the converters.
Fig. 8. Waveforms on the secondary winding of the converter transformer with
capacitors connected across the dc side of the converter. (a) Voltage waveform.
(b) Current waveform.
VI. PROPOSED SOLUTIONS TO OVERCOME THE PROBLEMS
ASSOCIATED WITH THE SECONDARY WINDINGS
Due to the higher source impedance of the converter trans-
former, voltage transients are introduced during the changeover
of current from one phase to another. A reduction of these
voltage transients can be achieved in the following ways:
1) reduction of commutation overlap;
2) inclusion of the filters on the secondary of the converter
transformer;
3) introducing RC snubbers on the secondary of the converter
transformer.
1) Reduction of Commutation Overlap: Commutation
overlap can be reduced by introducing the capacitor [12], [13]
on the dc side of the converter as depicted in Fig. 7. It will
prevent the dc-link voltage from sagging. The capacitor will
also counter the effect of source inductance to decrease the
commutation overlap. Thus, the commutation process becomes
faster and voltage transients during commutation will be con-
tained. When the system is simulated with this configuration,
there is a reduction of voltage spikes. The maximum voltage
spike is observed to be 150 kV during commutation which was
originally 200 kV without the capacitor. Voltage THD is ob-
served to be reduced to 17% from 20%. Only the fifth harmonic
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 24, NO. 2, APRIL 2009
Fig. 9. THD of the voltage and current on the secondary winding of the con-
verter transformer with capacitors connected across the dc side of the converters.
(a) Voltage THD. (b) Current THD.
TABLE II
VARIOUS THD AT FULL LOAD WITH CAPACITORS CONNECTED
ON THE DC SIDE OF THE CONVERTERS
current is observed to be predominant in the secondary winding
of the converter transformer. The R-C values considered for
simulation are 65 and 89.54 F. The capacitance
value is decided with an aim to nullify the reactance effect of
the converter transformer connected to each 6-pulse thyristor
converter. The value of is decided by a hit-and-trial by
repeating computer simulations with an aim to minimize the
losses in the resistance and to keep the source current within
limits. The corresponding voltage and current waveforms and
the respective harmonic spectrums are shown in Figs. 8 and 9
and in Table II.
2) Inclusion of Filters on the Secondary of the Converter
Transformer: Generally, filters are included in the source side
and in the present configuration, there is no space to add filters
in the secondary of the converter transformer. But if there is a
way to introduce filters on the secondary side, then it will help
BHUVANESWARI AND MAHANTA: ANALYSIS OF CONVERTER TRANSFORMER FAILURE 819

Fig. 10. Waveforms on the secondary winding of the converter transformer

with capacitors connected across the dc side of the converters and fifth and sev-
enth harmonic passive filters in service. (a) Voltage waveform. (b) Current wave-
form.

to reduce the secondary winding harmonics and the cost on the

primary side filters can also be reduced. The system has been
simulated with fifth harmonic filters on the secondary side of
the converter transformer along with capacitor on the dc side
of the converters. It is observed that current THD on the sec-
ondary side is getting reduced to 7% from 21% and voltage
THD is observed to be coming down to 14% from 21%. When Fig. 11. Voltage and current THD on the secondary winding of the converter
the fifth and seventh harmonic passive filters are put on the sec- transformer with capacitors connected across the dc side of the converters and
fifth and seventh harmonic passive filters in service. (a) Voltage THD. (b) Cur-
ondary side, further improvement in current harmonics is ob- rent THD.
served. In both cases, the maximum voltage spike is observed
to reduce to 125 kV from 200 kV. Hence, it will definitely be
useful to include passive filters in the secondary side to reduce TABLE III
VARIOUS THD AT FULL LOAD WITH FIFTH AND SEVENTH HARMONIC FILTERS
the voltage stress across the secondary windings of the converter AND CAPACITORS CONNECTED ON THE DC SIDE OF THE CONVERTERS
transformer. Here, the fifth and seventh harmonic filters will
mitigate the fifth and seventh harmonic current, and the reac-
tive power requirement by the converters will be supplied by
the filters on the source side. However, space has to be created
for introducing the fifth and seventh harmonic filters on the sec-
ondary side of the transformer. Also, the filters on the source
side can be further simplified if part of the reactive power re-
quirement can be met by the secondary side filters. The capac-
itor connected across the dc side of the converter will help to a winding section. In these cases, the overvoltages set up a
reduce the commutation overlap. The voltage and current wave- resonance oscillation inside the winding with high amplitude
forms and corresponding THDs are depicted in Figs. 10, 11, and that can cause damage to the insulation. To avoid these, RC
Table III, respectively. snubbers can be connected from terminals to ground or in
Design of Fifth and Seventh Harmonic Passive Filters: parallel to the winding section. Soyal [15] has stated that
Single-tuned passive filters are designed according to [12]. The high-frequency transient voltages below the protection level of
value of has been taken as 0.5 F; accordingly, the value of the surge arrestor can cause severe internal voltage stresses that
has been calculated by using LC and a quality can result in dielectric breakdown of the winding section. These
factor of 150 has been chosen. A smaller value of is taken in switching overvoltages can be suppressed by RC snubbers.
order to reduce the reactive power generation as it has already However, there is no straightforward procedure for deciding
been supplied by passive filters present on the source side. the values of and . These have to be checked by means
3) Provision of RC Snubbers on the Secondary of the Con- of computer simulations, keeping the losses to a minimum
verter Transformer: Excessive overvoltages can occur in the [14]. It is observed that there is no provision for the surge
transformer windings if the exciting overvoltage has the same arrestor in the secondary of the converter transformer in the
frequency as the natural frequency [13], [14] of a winding or Talcher–Kolar system, although lightning arrestors are installed
820
Fig. 12. Waveforms with the RC snubbers connected between the winding ter-
minals at the secondary of the converter transformer. (a) Voltage waveform. (b)
Current waveform.
on the primary of the converter transformer. Zinc–oxide varis-
tors are connected across the converters to protect them against
overvoltages. To check the validity of the proposed solution,
the HVDC system has been simulated by connecting RC snub-
bers (a) across the secondary windings and (b) between phase
terminals and ground. The voltage THD comes down to 15%
in this case. The rate of change of voltage—dv/dt also reduces
considerably. Hence, if the snubbers are properly chosen, they
will help to reduce insulation stresses in the secondary winding
of the converter transformers.
The design of the capacitor is based on the energy balance
method [13]. But there is no definite procedure to calculate the
value of resistance. Here, the capacitance value is taken as 3
F and 750 . Fine tuning of the R-C parameters will re-
duce the losses. It is found that whether snubbers are connected
across the winding terminals or they are connected between line
and ground, the results obtained are identical. The waveforms
obtained by connecting snubbers across winding terminals and
the corresponding THDs are presented in Figs. 12 and 13 and in
Table IV.
Thus, the analysis on the stresses of the converter trans-
former secondary can be summarized as follows: The stresses
are caused invariably by harmonics present in the voltages and
currents in the secondary winding. These are predominantly
the fifth and seventh order. The commutation overlap caused
by large reactance of the transformer results in a huge rate
of the change of voltage. These ill effets can be minimized
by the following techniques: 1) connecting a capacitor in the
dc link, 2) connecting passive filters on the secondary side,
and 3) connecting RC snubbers across the phase windings or
winding terminal to ground. Out of these three solutions, a
combination of the dc-link capacitor and passive filters seems to
be yielding the best results. However, due to the limitations of
the Simulink/Matlab software, transient modeling of the trans-
former winding could not be performed accurately. To obtain
accurate results on the stress reduction with the introduction of
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 24, NO. 2, APRIL 2009
Fig. 13. Voltage and current THDs with RC snubbers connected between the
winding terminals at the secondary of the converter transformer. (a) Voltage
THD. (b) Current THD.
TABLE IV
VARIOUS THD WITH RC SNUBBERS CONNECTED
BETWEEN THE WINDING TERMINALS
secondary side filters and R-C snubbers, an accurate transient
modeling of the transformer winding is very much essential.
VII. CONCLUSION
This paper presented the analysis of the HVDC transmis-
sion system of the 2000-MW capacity that exists between
Talcher and Kolar in the Indian subcontinent. It is found that
although the filters installed in the primary side of the converter
transformer eliminate the harmonics in the source end, the
secondary windings are very much affected by the harmonics
and the voltage spikes caused by commutation overlap. Three
solutions have been proposed by the authors to reduce the
intensity of problems caused by voltage transients. From the
simulation results obtained, it is found that a combination of
passive filters of the fifth and seventh order installed in the
secondary side of the transformer along with an R-C snubber in
the dc link yields maximum reduction in the current harmonics
and commutation overlap voltage spikes. It is envisaged that the
BHUVANESWARI AND MAHANTA: ANALYSIS OF CONVERTER TRANSFORMER FAILURE
installation of filters on the secondary side will also simplify the
design of secondary windings of the converter transformer and
the requirement of filters on the source side will be reduced.
RC snubbers with a suitable design on the secondary of the
converter transformer can provide relief to insulation stresses
across the winding.
APPENDIX
Technical parameters of the Talcher–Kolar HVDC system.
Generator: 588 MVA, 21 kV, Yg, % %.
Generator transformer: 600 MVA, 21/420 kV, Yg,
% %.
Converter transformer: 397/198.5/198.5 MVA, 400/
210/210 kV, 1700/1635/1635 A, Impedance %.
Filters in service: double-tuned passive filters.
Resistance of the transmission line: 12.7–20.1 /pole.
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G. Bhuvaneswari (SM’99) received the M.Sc. and
Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the In-
dian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras, India.
She was a faculty member with Anna University,
Madras, for about two years after which she was
with the Electrical Utility ComEd, Chicago, IL.
Since 1997, she has been a faculty member in the
Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT, Delhi,
where she is currently an Associate Professor. Her
areas of interest are power electronics, electrical
machines, drives, and power quality.
Dr. Bhuvaneswari is a Life Fellow of the Institution of Electronics and
Telecommunication Engineers.
B. C. Mahanta received the M.Tech. degree in power generation technology
from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India, in 2007.
He has more than a decade of experience in the power generation sector. Cur-
rently, he is with NTPC Ltd., Talcher, India. His areas of interest are power
systems, power quality, and drives.