Analysis and Enhancement of Incremental-Quantity-Based Distance Protection With Grid-Forming Inverters

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how grid-forming inverters affect incremental-quantity-based distance protection and proposes a new trip criterion for improved dependability and ease of tuning.

Contribution

It introduces an analytical model for GFM inverter impact on IQ-based protection and proposes a new trip criterion for better reliability and tunability.

Findings

IQ-based protection is more dependable for close-in faults.

It can be secure for external faults with proper overreach.

Tuning IQ-based protection is challenging across different sources.

Abstract

Grid-forming (GFM) inverters are expected in future inverter-dominated grids. In such grids, time-domain protection schemes, for example those based on instantaneous incremental quantities (IQs), are being advocated as potential solutions to the challenges faced by traditional phasor-based protection schemes, due to their ability to process nonlinear data. However, IQ-based protection uses the superposition principle; thus, linearity is still assumed in their application, while GFM inverters are nonlinear sources during faults. This paper proposes an analytical model to study the impact of GFM inverters on the relay-measured IQs. The model is validated with PSCAD/EMTDC simulations, and is used to investigate the interoperability of time-domain IQ-based distance protection with GFM inverters employing different current limiters. Results show that time-domain IQ-based distance protection demonstrates superior dependability for close-in faults compared to that of quadrilateral distance protection with GFM inverters, and it has the possibility to be secure for external faults when quadrilateral distance protection overreaches; however, tuning of its settings is hard to generalize for various sources and faults. Taking the observed interoperability issues into account, a trip criterion for dependable and secure time-domain IQ-based distance protection is proposed, which facilitates easy-to-tune and general settings for applications with GFM inverters.