DC Short Circuit Fault Analysis and Protection of Ring Type DC Microgrid

Download as pdf or txt
Download as pdf or txt
You are on page 1of 7

2016 IEEE 8th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference (IPEMC-ECCE Asia)

DC Short Circuit Fault Analysis and Protection of


Ring Type DC Microgrid

Ming Yu, Yi Wang, Lirong Zhang, Ziguang Zhang


State Key Laboratory of Alternate Electrical Power System with Renewable Energy Sources
North China Electric Power University
Baoding, China

Abstract—DC fault location and protection is the key problem occurs, power will be released to the point of failure through
to be solved of DC microgrid in spite of the fact that it has the anti parallel diode of VSC(Voltage Source Converter,
become the ideal networking mode of distributed generation due VSC) which results in over-current and seriously harms the
to its obvious advantages. In this paper, a ring-type wind turbine- safe operation of the system. In literature [5], the fault
based DC microgrid is taken as the object of study and the protection is realized by using AC circuit breaker and DC fast
transient characteristics of VSC as well as the system under DC switch in a coordination mode. However, the response of AC
line fault are analyzed based on which the protection scheme of circuit breaker is not fast enough to remove the fault so that
current differential protection as the main protection and under- the power electronic devices may be damaged in a very short
voltage protection as the backup one is proposed. In this method,
time. Park Jae-Do proposed a non-iterative fault location
the power supply security of the DC microgrid system is
guaranteed by detecting the input and output currents of the DC
technology based on probing power, but it is required to install
transmission lines through which the corresponding differential a complex detection power unit [6].
currents can be calculated to locate and isolate the fault lines. DC fault is divided into short circuit fault, ground fault,
Simulations are conducted on MATLAB/Simulink and the results disconnection fault and so on [6-8]. The characteristics of DC
show that the protection system can response rapidly to the line bipolar short-circuit fault and its protection strategy is the
differential current value under short circuit fault, so as to focus of this paper. The bipolar short-circuit fault is generally
realize the DC short circuit fault protection of DC microgrid
due to external mechanical stress and is seen as a permanent
system.
fault which needs to be quickly and accurately cut to avoid the
Keywords—DC microgrid; ring topology; bipolar short circuit; paralysis of the whole DC network [9]. Therefore, in order to
fault analysis; current differential protection ensure the safely and stably operation of the DC microgrid in
fault condition, it is urgent to study the fast fault location and
isolation scheme. Compared with AC microgrid, the research
I. INTRODUCTION on the protection of DC microgrid is still in the primary stage.
In recent years, distributed energy has received more and In the design of the protection system of DC microgrid,
more attention with the continuously increasing of electricity experience can be drawn from AC transmission and flexible
consumption in load-intensive areas and the rapid growth of HVDC transmission system.
DC load. At the same time, AC power distribution network is
In this paper, the ring type wind turbine-based DC
faced with many challenges such as the access of distributed
microgrid is taken as the research object and a novel bipolar
new energy, load diversification, power quality requirements
short-circuit fault protection scheme of the DC transmission
and so on [1]. With the strong advantages in the reduction of
line is proposed. Firstly, transient characteristics of DC
converter number, the improvement of energy conversion
microgrid system during short-circuit fault are analyzed.
efficiency and transport capacity as well as easy access to new
Secondly, the protection scheme is proposed in which current
energy, the DC power distribution has a broad development
differential protection is utilized as the main protection and
prospects. The low voltage DC microgrid, which is established
under voltage protection as the reserve one. Finally, to verify
through connection of the micro-source, the storage unit, the
the effectiveness of the proposed protection scheme, model of
load and the AC grid by DC transmission line, has become a
ring topology wind power DC microgrid is established based
new trend of DC distribution network due to its flexibility and
on MATLAB/ Simulink and simulations are conducted under
stability [2].
short circuit fault.
At present, the research of DC microgrid mainly focuses
on the control strategy during stable operation [3-4]. However, II. CHARACTERISTICS OF DC BIPOLAR SHORT-CIRCUIT FAULT
to ensure the safe and stable operation of DC microgrid,
reliable DC fault protection strategy is indispensable. In DC A. DC fault characteristics of VSC
microgrid, there are more power electronic converters than AC
network through which micro power supply and load as well When the bipolar short-circuit fault of the transmission
as the AC grid are connected to DC network. When DC fault line occurs in the DC microgrid, DC side capacitor discharges
rapidly through the point of failure and the current of the AC
Project Supported by National 863 Program (2015AA050101) and the
Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2014ZZD11).

978-1-5090-1210-7/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE

978-1-5090-1210-7/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE


2016 IEEE 8th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference (IPEMC-ECCE Asia)

system is clamped to the three-phase short-circuit current. The d 2 vc dv


converter is then blocked by its over current protection and the LC 2
+ RC c + vc = 0 (1)
AC current can still feed to the fault point through the anti dt dt
parallel diode of VSC. The equivalent circuit of VSC under
DC cable short-circuit fault is as shown in Fig. 1 where R and Considering that the resistance of the metal short circuit is
L are the equivalent resistance and inductance of the DC line small, the analysis in this paper is carried out under the
respectively and C is the equivalent capacitance of the DC condition of R < 2 L / C .
side capacitor and line equivalent capacitance. It can be seen
that the equivalent circuit is a complex nonlinear circuit and It is assumed that the DC bipolar short-circuit fault occurs
can be divided into three stages. in t0 and the initial conditions are vc(t0)=V0 ,iL(t0)=I0. The
circuit is in an oscillatory discharge process, and the voltage
1) Capacitor discharge phase and current of the DC side are as follows.
In this stage, the capacitor discharges rapidly in the
occurrence of the line bipolar short circuit fault. DC voltage V0ω0 I 0 −δ t
drops from the initial value to zero with DC fault current rise vc = e−δ t sin(ωt + β ) − e sin ωt (2)
ω ωC
correspondingly. In this period, the capacitor, line resistance
and inductance constitute a RLC series two order circuit and
the discharge process can be considered as a zero input dvc
response. iL = C
dt
Without considering the effect of the AC system, the (3)
I 0 ω0 V0 −δ t
equivalent circuit is shown in Fig. 2(a).The following equation =− e −δ t sin(ω t − β ) + e sin ωt
is made by Kirchhoff's voltage law. ω ωL
iVSC iL
1 ω R
Where: ω0 = δ + ω =
2 2
, β = arctan ,δ =
ig a,b,c
R L LC δ 2L
iC
iVD1 iVD2 iVD3 1 R
Lg + ,ω2 = − ( )2 .
C vC LC 2L
-
The time when the capacitor discharge to zero is calculated
as follows.

π −γ
t1 = t0 + (4)
Fig. 1. Equivalent circuit of VSC under DC cable short circuit fault. ω

Where: γ = arctan (V0ω0 C sin β ) / (V0ω0 C cos β − I 0 ) 


.
The bring (4) into formula (3), iL shown in (4)can be
obtained.

π −γ
I 0ω0 −δ ( )
iL (t1 ) = − e ω sin(π − γ − β ) +
ω
π −γ
(5)
V0 −δ ( )
e ω sin γ
ωL
In general, when metal short circuit happens in DC
1
transmission line( ( R ) 2 << ),it can be considered that
2L LC
ω0=ω. In this condition, the simplified short circuit current can
be expressed as follows.

C
iL = e −δ t (V0 sin ω t + I 0 cos ω t ) (6)
L

Fig.2. Equivalent circuit of VSC and its DC side during short circuit.
2016 IEEE 8th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference (IPEMC-ECCE Asia)

I0 L 3) Excitation phase of AC system


Suppose θ = arctan( ) ,Equation (6) can be further
V0 C When the converter is locked, the AC system would not be
removed from the microgrid. The three phase bridge rectifier
simplified to the following expression.
circuit which is formed by anti parallel diodes of the VSC
converter provides pathway for the AC system to continuously
−(
R
)t  C 2  deliver power to the DC microgrid, as is shown in Fig. 2(c). At
iL = e 2L
 V0 + I 0 2 sin(ωt + θ )  (7) this point, the VSC is equivalent to three phase uncontrolled
 L  rectifier working in DC side short-circuit state. The three-
phase short-circuit current of AC system can be calculated by
2) Diode continued flow phase the transient analysis method of power system. Before the
This stage begins from the time the DC capacitor voltage occurrence of short circuit fault, the current of phase A is
drops to zero till the moment the capacitor starts to be shown below.
recharged. When vc>0, the capacitor discharges and current
flows through the line impedance. With the discharge of iga|0| = Im|0| sin(ωt + α − ϕ|0| ) (12)
capacitor, the DC voltage reduces and when vc drops to zero,
which is the moment of t1, the inductor starts discharging. At Where: I m|0| and ω are the current amplitude and synchronous
the same time, the fault current flows through the anti parallel
diode with the initial condition of iL (t1 ) = I 0' . The equivalent frequency respectively. α indicates the angle of phase a and
circuit is shown in Fig. 2(b) and each bridge arm of the three-
ϕ|0| is the impedance angle. The three-phase short-circuit
phase bridge which is composed of diodes is subjected to a current can be obtained by the following formula
third of the inductor current, i.e.
iga = Im sin(ωt + α − ϕ ) +
1 
iVD = iL (8)  Im|0| sin(α − ϕ|0| ) − Im sin(α − ϕ )  e−t /τ
3 
igb = Im sin(ωt + α − 120° − ϕ ) +
The circuit is then changed to a first-order circuit with the  (13)
 Im|0| sin(α − 120° − ϕ|0| ) − Im sin(α − 120° − ϕ )  e−t /τ
inductance current attenuates by the exponential law.
i = Im sin(ωt + α + 120° − ϕ ) +
 gc
iL = I 0' e− ( R / L )t (9)  Im|0| sin(α + 120° − ϕ|0| ) − Im sin(α + 120° − ϕ )  e−t /τ

This process is the most dangerous one for the diode, Where: Im is the amplitude of the periodic component of short
because during this time there is a great inductance discharge circuit current and ϕ = arctan ω ( Lg + L) / R  is the
current flowing suddenly through the diode, the initial value of
which is so large that the diode can be damaged impedance angle of the short circuit. τ = ( Lg + L) / R and Lg
instantaneously. represent the time constant of the short circuit loop and the
The time the capacitor discharges to zero and the line inductance of the VSC respectively.
corresponding current value can be simplified as Part of the AC system short circuit current that is greater
than zero is sent to DC side through the three phase
π −γ  V C  uncontrolled rectifier circuit which is composed of diodes.
t1 = t0 + = t0 + LC π + arctan  0   (10) Therefore, the short circuit current on the DC side of the VSC
ω   I0 L   is described by the following formula.

iVSC = iVD1 + iVD2 + iVD3 = iga,( >0) + igb,( >0) + igc,( >0) (14)
−(
R
) t1  C 2 
iL (t1 ) = e 2L
 V0 + I 0 2 sin(π − γ + θ )  (11) From the analysis above, it can be concluded that the time
 L  when the voltage of DC capacitor reduces to zero and the
oscillating current flows through the continued diodes is the
It should be pointed out that the current flowing through most dangerous moment for the whole system. The protection
the diode is not totally the current of the inductor. This is scheme must be designed to be fast enough to ensure that the
because with the discharging of DC capacitor, the AC system fault is removed before the diode continued flow phase to
can provide electric current through the diode to the DC avoid damage of the diodes and the converter.
network when the DC voltage drops to a certain low value.
Therefore, the current flowing through the diode should be the B. The fault characteristics of DC short circuit ring DC
sum of the inductance current and that of the AC system. With microgrid
the attenuation of the line inductance current and the
increasing of the AC current, the capacitor starts charging and For AC system, the AC voltage and current are changing
the DC voltage increases gradually. periodically with large change rates. Moreover, the current
2016 IEEE 8th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference (IPEMC-ECCE Asia)

source converter in AC system adopts high inductance for microgrid is the rapid change of current, including its
filtering so that the fault current rises slowly. Compared to AC amplitude and direction. With respect to AC faults, DC fault
network, low voltage DC microgrid is a small inertia system characteristics are more simple and easy to detect. However,
with a large number of voltage source converters connecting compared to AC network, DC microgrid requires more
the distributed power and load. The system can ensure the quickly and more accurate fault diagnosis, location and
power balance in the network by controlling the DC voltage. isolation method. Due to the similar voltage or current
During stable operation, large mutation of the DC voltage characteristics on each line of ring type DC microgrid under
amplitude does not occur. However, the DC voltage will short-circuit fault, the DC quick break protection based on the
quickly decrease during short circuit fault with rapidly amplitude of the current, the overcurrent protection or the
changing of the DC current. current increment protection can not accurately distinguish the
fault line so that cannot be applied to ring type DC microgrid.
For the ring topology DC microgrid, when bipolar short- In this paper, a current differential protection method is
circuit fault occurs on DC line, DC voltage and current of proposed which is based on the current amplitude as well as
other units will also be affected. The power released to the the directional characteristics and is utilized as the main
point of failure is not only from the units being connected by protection.
the fault line, but also from other units. In addition, the
difference of fault voltage or current characteristic among the Longitudinal current differential protection can be fast and
units is not obvious. Fig. 3 shows the current direction reliable in distinguishing the internal fault of certain line and
schematic of four-end ring type wind power DC microgrid the external fault, with absolute selectivity of internal short-
system under bipolar short-circuit fault of DC line. It can be circuit of transmission line and is widely used in the protection
seen from this figure that the system is composed of wind of AC transmission line [10]. As the transmission line of DC
power unit, storage unit, AC power grid and load with the microgrid is short and the channel transmission time is limited
stable state values of active power marked on it. Before the so that the synchronous problem of the two ends of DC line
fault occurs, the power balance of the microgrid is guaranteed has little effect on the performance of the longitudinal
by the grid-side converter through power injection. In differential protection. Except that the currents at both ends of
addition, the directions of the front and end currents both transmission line during the period of power adjustment do not
before and after the fault on each transmission line are drawn match, the currents at both ends are stable DC components
from which it can be seen that currents flow to the point of under normal condition [11]. Moreover, in DC microgrid, due
failure from not only both ends of the fault line but also from to the short line, small distribution capacitive current as well
other units through corresponding transmission lines after the as the DC voltage dividers and current dividers used for
short circuit fault occurs on line L13. Similarly, the current voltage and current sampling, its protective performance is not
directions can be analyzed when faults occur on transmission affected by the current transformer saturation, system
lines L12, L24 and L34. As the voltage source converter of oscillation and line distributed capacitance effect, thus higher
DC network utilizes large capacitor filter, the fault current reliability of protection is achieved.
rises rapidly in each side and may cause serious damage to the
line and converters in a short time, which requires a quick and According to the magnitude and direction characteristics of
accurate protection scheme to identify and isolate the fault the fault current, longitudinal current differential protection is
line. applied to protect the DC line of microgrid under short-circuit
fault. As is shown in Fig. 4, the operating principle of current
differential protection for the DC microgrid system
III. PROTECTION DESIGN OF DC MICROGRID transmission line is as follows. Provided that the positive
According to the analysis above, the most direct current direction is from the bus to the dc transmission line
manifestation of bipolar fault of DC line in ring type DC being protected. The input and output current vectors of the
two ends of dc transmission lines are sampled and added with
the absolute value of the summation compared with the setting
value to decide which line is under short-circuit fault. Then
control signals are sent from the protection control module to
circuit breakers on both ends of the fault line to open circuit
breakers and remove the line. At the same time, diode Dex of
additional absorbing circuit conducts to provide continued
flow branch for short-circuit current which would be absorbed
by the resistance Rex to reduce the influence of fault current on
line stress.

I diff = I L_in + I L_out > I set (15)

Fig. 3. Currents direction under short-circuit fault on L13.


2016 IEEE 8th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference (IPEMC-ECCE Asia)

voltage protection acts as the second line of defense to


effectively prevent the diodes and other power electronic
devices from huge damage by short-circuit current .

IV. SIMULATION ANALYSIS


To verify the effectiveness of the proposed protection
strategy, the simulation software MATLAB/ Simulink is
utilized to build the ring type DC microgrid which is shown in
Fig. 5. The wind power generation unit adopts the permanent
magnet synchronous generator(PMSG) and is connected to the
microgrid through W-VSC which is a PWM-based VSC and
works at maximum power tracking mode in normal condition.
The AC load is connected to the DC network through L-VSC.
For the battery energy storage unit, the bidirectional DC/DC
converter Bi-DC is utilized to incorporate it into the DC
microgrid. In addition, the microgrid gets access to the AC
grid through G-VSC which is also a PWM-based VSC. When
the DC microgrid operates at normal state under grid-
Fig. 4. Current differential protection strategy under DC cable bipolar short- connected mode, internal power balance is ensured by the G-
circuit fault. VSC through control of the DC voltage stability. The battery
is in charging state or backup state in normal condition.
Where: IL_out and IL_in are the input and output current vectors However, when the AC grid encounters fault disturbance or
of the line at both ends respectively. Idiff is the differential the microgrid is operating in the islanded mode, the battery
current and the Iset is the setting value which is tuned mainly takes in charge of the power balance and the stable operation
based on the overcurrent value of the power electronic of the system. DC variables in Fig. 5 Udc_WT and Idc_WT, Udc_B
devices. Under the specified current direction, the current and Idc_B, Udc_G and Idc_G as well as Udc_L and Idc_L represent the
flowing in and out of the line are equal in value and opposite voltages and currents on the side of W-VSC, Bi-DC, G-VSC
in direction, so that the differential current is equal to zero. and L-VSC respectively. Parameters of the simulation system
However, when bipolar short-circuit fault occurs, the fault are shown in table 1 and the wind power generation system
current increases rapidly and the currents on both ends of the under simulation is considered as an equivalent unit. The
line flow to the same point , therefore, the differential current bipolar short-circuit fault occurs at the midpoint of the DC line
value increase instantaneous to be greater than the setting L13 at 1.5s with the operating characteristics of the microgrid
value. According to the control signal, the DC solid state before and after adopting the current differential protection
circuit breaker can quickly remove the fault line in one shown in the following figures.
millisecond, so as to prevent the short circuit fault current of
the DC units reaching the overcurrent value and protect the
power electronic equipments. The current differential
protection is based on the direction characteristic of the
currents on both ends of the protected line in addition to the
fault current value. It is simple, reliable and with fast action
which makes it more practical.
When short-circuit fault occurs in DC microgrid, the DC
voltage drops quickly in addition to the rapid rise of the
current. Due to the fact that current differential protection may
sometimes malfunction and the fault line cannot be removed,
backup protection is needed to prevent the diodes from
damage. In this paper, the characteristic of DC voltage Fig. 5. The simulated system diagram of the wind turbine-based DC microgrid.
reduction of microgrid under short-circuit fault is taken as the
criterion and the under voltage backup protection is proposed. TAB. 1. POWER PARAMETERS OF THE SIMULATION SYSTEM.
The specific protection strategy is as follows: when the DC
Rated power: 60kW; Rated voltage: 400 V
voltage is lower than the setting value and is still unable to
DC line Rt=0.0139Ω/km; Lt=0.159mH/km; Ct=0.231μF/km;
return to the normal range of amplitude after a certain delay, Lth=0.4km;C=50mF
tripping instructions are immediately sent to the circuit Two permanent magnet wind turbine of 30kW/220V
breakers to quickly cut off the fault line. The lower limit of the Wind
Rated wind speed: 12m/s
turbine
allowable voltage fluctuation of the transmission line is taken Rated power of W-VSC: 60 kW
as the main reference for tuning of the under voltage setting G-VSC Rated power : 30 kW
value and t1which is the upper limit for the diodes to withstand Energy Rated power of Bi-DC: 30 kW
the excessive current is used for the setting of the delay time. storage Battery: Lead acid battery of 120 V/100 A·h
When the current differential protection is invalid, under Load 30 kW
2016 IEEE 8th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference (IPEMC-ECCE Asia)

At the beginning of the simulation, the power of the wind


turbine is about 22kW and the load power is 30kW. The
battery is in the state of charge with the charge power of about
8kW. Under the grid-connected mode, G-VSC is in charge of
the control of DC voltage stability and the approximately
16kW power gap is provided to the DC microgrid by the AC
grid. At 1.5s the bipolar short-circuit fault occurs at the
midpoint of the L13 DC line which is shown in Fig. 6. It lasts
about 42ms before the DC capacitor discharge voltage of G-
VSC reaches zero and the short-circuit current shoots to about
910 A which can damage the freewheel diodes in an instant.
Fig. 7 shows the characteristics of three-phase current of W-
VSC and G-VSC on the AC side both before and after the
fault from which it can be seen that the three-phase short-
circuit current is significantly changed compared with
thecurrent before the fault. Fig. 8 is the input and output
current of each DC transmission line before and after the
short-circuit fault which demonstrates that the input and
output current are equal in value and opposite in direction
under normal operating state. However, when fault takes
place, currents from all the units increase rapidly and flow to
Fig. 8. DC currents of each cable under fault.
the point of fault with the direction of current on one side of
the fault line L13 being reverse which can be seen in Fig. 8
(b). The waveform of the differential current on line L13 is
presented in Fig. 9 from which it can be obviously seen that
that the current changes rapidly and the amplitude is huge with
maximum value of about 3300A.
The setting value of the current differential protection
module Iset is configured to be 3pu (450A). It takes about
2.6ms for the differential current of line L13 to reach the Fig. 9. Differential current on line L13 under fault.
setting value and is being detected by the protection module.
In addition, the DC circuit breaker is substituted by the switch As is shown in Fig. 10 (c), the total time used for the DC
model which is made up by IGBT and resistance connected in circuit breakers to open and isolate the fault line is 3.6ms
parallel and the operation time of it is set to be 1ms. which is much less than the time used for the G-VSC capacitor
voltage to discharge to zero. Therefore, the damage caused by
the short-circuit fault to the diode can be avoided and
electronic devices as well as the microgrid are protected. Fig.
10 (a) and (b) show the voltage and current waveforms of the
grid-side converter on DC side after the application of
protective measures. In comparison with Fig. 6, the DC
current value only increases to 200A (1.3pu) with the
protection strategy. With the open of the circuit breakers and
the removal of the fault line, the G-VSC quickly restores to
the stable operating state with slightly fluctuation of the DC
voltage. Before the short circuit fault occurs, the G-VSC is in
charge of the DC voltage stability of the system and voltages
on other unit sides are near the rating value. With the open of
the circuit breakers and the isolation of the line L13 after the
Fig. 6. DC voltage and current of G-VSC under fault. fault, the DC microgrid operates in open-loop state and the
wind power is transmitted by line L12 without power losses.
At the same time, DC microgrid system quickly restores to
stable operation state with the control of DC voltage by G-
VSC. Fig. 11 shows the three-phase current of G-VSC and W-
VSC under the protection scheme. Compared with Fig. 7, the
three-phase current of VSC on the AC side change slightly
with the function of the protection scheme. G-VSC adjusts its
Fig. 7. AC currents of G-VSC under fault.
output current according to the power fluctuations within the
DC microgrid to ensure the power balance of the system.
2016 IEEE 8th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference (IPEMC-ECCE Asia)

REFERENCES
[1] J. Y. Kim et al., "Cooperative Control Strategy of Energy Storage
System and Microsources for Stabilizing the Microgrid during Islanded
Operation," in IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, vol. 25, no. 12,
pp. 3037-3048, Dec. 2010.
[2] C. A. Apostolopoulos and G. N. Korres, "A Novel Algorithm for
Locating Faults on Transposed/Untransposed Transmission Lines
Without Utilizing Line Parameters," in IEEE Transactions on Power
Delivery, vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 2328-2338, Oct. 2010.
[3] L. Zhang, Y. Wang, H. Li and P. Sun, "Hierarchical coordinated control
of DC microgrid with wind turbines," IECON 2012 - 38th Annual
Conference on IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, Montreal, QC, 2012,
pp. 3547-3552.
[4] S. Anand, B. G. Fernandes and M. Guerrero, "Distributed Control to
Ensure Proportional Load Sharing and Improve Voltage Regulation in
Low-Voltage DC Microgrids," in IEEE Transactions on Power
Electronics, vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 1900-1913, April 2013.
[5] L. Tang and B. T. Ooi, "Locating and Isolating DC Faults in Multi-
Fig. 10. DC voltage and current of G-VSCunder protection.
Terminal DC Systems," in IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, vol.
22, no. 3, pp. 1877-1884, July 2007.
[6] J. D. Park, J. Candelaria, L. Ma and K. Dunn, "DC Ring-Bus Microgrid
Fault Protection and Identification of Fault Location," in IEEE
Transactions on Power Delivery, vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 2574-2584, Oct.
2013.
[7] J. D. Park and J. Candelaria, "Fault Detection and Isolation in Low-
Voltage DC-Bus Microgrid System," in IEEE Transactions on Power
Delivery, vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 779-787, April 2013.
Fig. 11. AC currents of G-VSC under protection. [8] S. D. A. Fletcher, P. J. Norman, K. Fong, S. J. Galloway and G. M. Burt,
"High-Speed Differential Protection for Smart DC Distribution
It can be seen from Fig. 8 to Fig.11 that the fault line was Systems," in IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, vol. 5, no. 5, pp. 2610-
2617, Sept. 2014.
quickly isolated after the occurrence of short circuit fault in
[9] P. H. Divshali, A. Alimardani, S. H. Hosseinian and M. Abedi,
the ring type DC microgrid with the proposed protection "Decentralized Cooperative Control Strategy of Microsources for
strategy. Damage of the diodes and transmission lines as well Stabilizing Autonomous VSC-Based Microgrids," in IEEE Transactions
as other electronic components are avoided which helps the on Power Systems, vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 1949-1959, Nov. 2012.
quickly restoration of the microgrid. After the removal of the [10] S. Dambhare, S. A. Soman and M. C. Chandorkar, "Adaptive Current
fault line, the system operates in open-loop state without wind Differential Protection Schemes for Transmission-Line Protection," in
power loss so that the utilization efficiency of the VSC is IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 1832-1841,
Oct. 2009.
improved. Therefore, system protection under bipolar short-
circuit fault of the ring type DC microgrid is achieved with the [11] C. A. Apostolopoulos and G. N. Korres, "A Novel Algorithm for
Locating Faults on Transposed/Untransposed Transmission Lines
proposed protection strategy. Without Utilizing Line Parameters," in IEEE Transactions on Power
Delivery, vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 2328-2338, Oct. 2010.
V. CONCLUSIONS
The transient characteristics of ring type DC microgird
system under DC line fault are analyzed based on which the
protection scheme of current differential protection as the
main protection and under-voltage protection as backup
protection is proposed. Simulation verifications are conducted
of the DC microgird under fault conditions with and without
the proposed protection scheme respectively. As the circuit
parameters (capacitance, inductance, etc.) exert an important
influence on the peak value of fault current and the flow time
of diode, the transient analysis of the bipolar circuit fault
provides theoretical basis for the main parameters design,
system testing and performance evaluation of the DC
microgird. For the short-circuit fault of low voltage wind
power DC microgird, the current differential protection
strategy only needs to detect the differential current of the DC
transmission lines to quickly and accurately locate and isolate
the fault line. In this way, damages of the line and electronic
device can be avoided and the system reliability as well as the
power supply quality can also be improved.

You might also like