Special reports and papers for high voltage direct current(HVDC) and power electronic(PE) technologies in study committee B4 of CIGRE 2008 are introduced. The main issues include operational performance of existing HVDC projects, feasibility studies, planning, designing and reliability criteria of HVDC projects, as well as new development of±800 kV UHVDC projects and HVDC projects based on voltage source converter(VSC), flexible AC transmission system(FACTS) applications and its new progress, new power electronic equipment development and its applications, etc.