Huang Receives Award for Research to Improve Circuit Breakers

Progress Energy Distinguished Professor Alex Huang has been awarded $1,326,903 by the ABB, Inc for research of Silicon Carbide (SiC) based Solid State Circuit Breakers (SSCB).

Dr. Alex Huang

Progress Energy Distinguished Professor Alex Huang has been awarded $1,326,903 by the ABB, Inc for research of Silicon Carbide (SiC) based Solid State Circuit Breakers (SSCB). SSCB is a critical technology for quickly protecting power systems from major faults and thus protecting people from suffering due to power outages.

Power system protection has long been considered one of the most difficult problems in the engineering of power systems, especially of DC power systems. Traditional protection devices use electro-mechanical switches and the protection takes tens of milliseconds. The protection also relies on the zero current crossing in an AC power system for the arc to extinguish. But what if you are using a DC power system or if much faster interruption is needed? SSCB is a viable solution since it is much faster and does not have an arc during interruption.

This research project will collaborate with ABB and Cree Inc. to explore SiC’s high voltage, high current and high temperature capability in SSCB application. The award will run from July 1st, 2015 to June 30th, 2019. The project co-Principal Investigators are Iqbal Husain and Douglas Hopkins.