Industrial electronics
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Thyristors That Carry Whole Power Stations
One chip can switch a city
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Lesson notes
Key points
- Modern HVDC links use thyristors cut from a whole silicon wafer, each blocking several kilovolts and carrying thousands of amps.
- Engineers stack many of them in series inside valve halls, so together they block hundreds of kilovolts and move gigawatts.
Definitions
- HVDC thyristor
- A single-wafer SCR, about the size of a palm, rated in kilovolts and kiloamps
Takeaway: Stack thyristors in series to share very high blocking voltage.
Quick check: How do HVDC valves block hundreds of kilovolts?
- Thyristors in series
- One giant resistor
- Thyristors in parallel
Series stacking shares the voltage across many devices.
Wafer thyristorSeries stacking
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