A Protection Method in Active Distribution Grids with High Penetration of Renewable Energy Sources

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel protection method for active distribution grids with high renewable energy penetration, which dynamically adjusts DG output and protective device settings to enhance coordination and reliability.

Contribution

It presents a new optimization-based protection strategy that considers renewable intermittency and reduces computational complexity compared to existing solutions.

Findings

Improved fault detection and coordination in active grids.

Enhanced economic and protection benefits from DG participation.

Reduced computational effort through problem decomposition.

Abstract

A protection method in active distribution networks is proposed in this paper. In active distribution systems, fault currents flow in multiple directions and presents a varying range of value, which poses a great challenge of maintaining coordination among protective devices on feeders. The proposed protection method addresses this challenge by simultaneously adjusting DG's output power and protection devices' settings in pre-fault networks. Comparing to previous protection solutions, the proposed method considers the influences from renewable DG's intermittency, and explores the economic and protection benefits of DG's active participation. The formulation of proposed method is decomposed into two optimization sub-problems, coupling through the constraint on fuse-recloser coordination. This decomposed mathematical structure effectively extinguishes the non-linearity arising from reclosers' time-current inverse characteristics, and greatly reduces computation efforts.