A comprehensive protection scheme for distribution systems

Abstract

The objective of the research is to formulate and demonstrate protection schemes for radial and loop systems, an active distribution system, and a microgrid. The schemes are composed of a) A new loop scheme by utilizing voltage, current, and time (VIT) reclosers and sectionalizers and b) A new protection scheme, the dynamic state estimation-based protection, for active distribution systems and microgrids. The first part of the research explores the closing onto a fault during the conventional loop sectionalizing scheme and provides a VIT scheme that can solve the problem. The immediate benefit of the VIT schemes is a reduction of the nuisance trips because of the fault closing onto a fault. Moreover, the number of protection zones is increased by the application of the VIT sectionalizers. This thesis demonstrates the VIT protection scheme for a traditional distribution system and presents numerical experiments using various test scenarios with various fault locations. The simulation results verify that the protection scheme successfully performs the automatic load transfer scheme for a loop system. The second part of the research identifies the increased number of protection issues according to the installation of distributed generations (DGs) and provides solution to the problem. To solve the issue, a new fault detection scheme, dynamic state estimation-based protection scheme, is illustrated in this thesis based on synchronized measurements. The method uses dynamic state estimation, based on the dynamic model of the component that accurately reflects the nonlinear characteristics of the component. Numerical experiments show that the protection of active distribution systems and microgrids is feasible in real time.