Research on the arcing horn with active arc extinguishing function for HVDC grounding electrode line

Abstract The grounding electrode line is an important part of the Ultra high voltage direct current (UHVDC) transmission system. It acts as the channel to conduct the unbalanced current and the grounding current.The arcing horn consists of a pair of electrodes installed in parallel at both ends of the insulator string, which provides a discharge channel for the fault current by an air gap to protect the insulators. In this paper, the voltage and current distributions of the arcing horn were studied when the grounding electrode line was struck by lightning. It is found that the current and voltage gradually decrease along the direction from the converter station to the earth electrode. An active arc extinguishing method based on variable resistance for arcing horn was proposed. An electromagnetic transient simulation model of the grounding electrode line is established based on the electrical parameters of a ±800 kV UHVDC transmission system. It is found that the absorbed energy of the arc extinguishing unit needs to be at least 31.2 and 49.6 kJ when the lightning current is 20 and 50kA, respectively. According to the calculation results, the arcing horn with arc extinguishing unit was developed and tested. The test results verifies that the designed arcing horn can meet the requirements of engineering application.