Design of a Solid-State Circuit Breaker for a DC Grid-Based Vessel Power System
, Igor Baraia-Etxaburu 1, Juan José Valera 2, Alain Sanchez-Ruiz 2 and Gonzalo Abad 1Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper proposed the basis for the design of a DC solid-state circuit breaker (SSCB) for low voltage vessel DC grids is presented. Experimental results show SSCB full-scale prototype detects and opens the fault in less than 3 µs. In general, the quality of the paper is good. However, the below comments need to be considered.
Please add maximum, 4 highlights to the paper.
Please explain the novelty of the research in bullet points on the introduction.
The quality of figure 9 is poor.
Please add a flowchart to explain Proposed SSCB implementation.
Please add the controller block diagram of Proposed SSCB.
Author Response
Point 1: Please add maximum, 4 highlights to the paper.
Response 1: These ones could be four highlights to the paper:
Vessel power systems based on DC grids are requiring protection devices and systems based on Solid State DC breakers Guidelines and recommendations for the design of a Solid State DC breaker are given. The design process based on models, simulation and analytical calculation is mandatory to get satisfactory results. A bidirectional solid state DC breaker prototype of 1kV, 1kA and fault opening time of 3us has been developed for the experimentation stage to corroborate the theoretical results.
In our opinion, the paper explains clearly these points so we do not believe that the text should be changed to include them. If we have misunderstood your comment, please tell us again to change it.
Point 2: Please explain the novelty of the research in bullet points on the introduction.
Response 2: We have changed both, the abstract and the introduction of the paper explaining that there is a “lack” of information about how to design a DC breaker. Therefore, even though the proposed breaker topology is not a novelty, the procedure shown to design the breaker is a contribution.
Point 3: The quality of figure 9 is poor.
Response 3: We have changed the figure to make the text clear. Thank you.
Point 4: Please add a flowchart to explain Proposed SSCB implementation. .
Response 4: We have included a flowchart to the paper showing the design procedure to follow.
Point 5: Please add the controller block diagram of Proposed SSCB.
Response 5: We have included a flowchart to the paper with the basic parts of the control.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The contribution sounds. However some minor improvements shall be performed before acceptance. It is recommended to revise and improve the paper abstract, please be specific in terms of the paper novelty description. The paper key words shall be revised and improved, try to applied the IEC or IEEE standards with aim to facilitated the paper recognition. The Section 2 shall be supported by references, in addition such sentence like e.g. the standard commercial breakdown voltages shall be supported by references as well. It is suggested to integrate the Section 3 with the contents of Section 6 with aim to eliminate too many similar figures, namely Figure 5 appears in many similar configurations. The paper conclusions shall be more specific, try to express the quantitative and qualitative approach of your research results. In addition, it is strongly recommended to revise and improve the paper language style, namely try to eliminate such words like however, moreover, etc. (if possible), please do not use "it is known"(if something is known try to replace by “as given in [ref]), it seems (the paper shall express valid results).
Author Response
Point 1: It is recommended to revise and improve the paper abstract, please be specific in terms of the paper novelty description.
Response 1: We have change both, the abstract and the introduction of the paper explaining that there is a “lack” of information about how to design a DC breaker. Therefore, even though the proposed breaker topology is not a novelty, the procedure shown to design the breaker is a contribution.
Point 2: The paper key words shall be revised and improved, try to applied the IEC or IEEE standards with aim to facilitated the paper recognition.
Response 2: We have changed and updated the keywords according to IEEE standards, Thank you very much.
Point 3: The Section 2 shall be supported by references, in addition such sentence like e.g. the standard commercial breakdown voltages shall be supported by references as well.
Response 3: We have included one reference to section 2 to evaluate the ideal breaker. Since this topology is not the most popular one (and has several drawbacks), it is not easy to find more references. However, any passive clamp, snubber related paper/book/note shows similar topologies.
We have include the proper references to show the breakdown voltages of the commercial devices.
Point 4: It is suggested to integrate the Section 3 with the contents of Section 6 with aim to eliminate too many similar figures, namely Figure 5 appears in many similar configurations.
Response 4: We understand your comment since we had similar figures in the paper. Instead of integrate sections, we have kept the same sections, eliminate redundant figures and fix the references to the proper figures. We believe that this is a simpler solution to the problem.
Point 5: The paper conclusions shall be more specific, try to express the quantitative and qualitative approach of your research results.
Response 5: Several changes have been included to the conclusions. Please read them in the paper.
Point 6: )In addition, it is strongly recommended to revise and improve the paper language style, namely try to eliminate such words like however, moreover, etc. (if possible), please do not use "it is known"(if something is known try to replace by “as given in [ref]), it seems (the paper shall express valid results).
Response 6: We have revised, changed and hopefully improved the language style of the paper. All the changes are highlighted for a fast review.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
