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

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.