Use of Traveling Wave Signatures in Medium Voltage Distribution Systems for fault detection and location

Published

August 17, 2021

Author(s)

DJ Anand, Avi Gopstein, Kumaraguru Prabakar, Lucas Monzon, Akanksha Singh, Matthew Reynolds, Yashwanth Nag Velaga, Jonathan Maack, Soumya Tiwari, Jina Roy, Colin Tombari, Ismael Mendoza Carrillo, Xinshuo Yang, Spatika Iyengar, William John

Abstract

Protection systems are a critical feature for the proper operation of an electric grid. Protection systems should be able to quickly detect, identify, locate, and isolate the faults within a time frame that prevents damage to grid components and reduces customer outages. As more inverter-based photovoltaics (PV) are integrated into the grid, phasor domain based protection schemes become more inaccurate because of low levels of fault current from inverters or because they respond too slowly to accurately identify fault conditions. This points to the need to identify and develop novel protection approaches for distribution systems with high penetrations of inverter-based PV. The main objective of this project is to develop new time domain-based protection schemes to enable more accurate and faster detection, identification, and location of faults in distribution systems and/or microgrids with high penetrations of inverter-based PV. Our approach aims to exploit the traveling waves that are generated during a fault or other disturbances in the grid. Traveling wave analysis is suitable for systems with high penetrations of inverter-based PV because it does not depend on the presence of overcurrent components or phasor information used by traditional protection schemes. Traveling wave-based protection schemes can be implemented at both the transmission and distribution system levels to simultaneously ensure the stability of the distribution system and the reliability of the bulk power system while enabling significant penetrations of distributed PV and other distributed energy resources; therefore, this project aims to enable increased deployment of inverter-based PV systems by addressing a critical power system operations barrier. This report presents the research work on traveling wave-based fault detection and identification for distribution systems performed at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in collaboration with the University of Colorado at Boulder and the National Institute of Science and Technology.

Citation

Technical Report of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Pub Type

Others

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.2172/1814596

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Citation

Anand, D. , Gopstein, A. , Prabakar, K. , Monzon, L. , Singh, A. , Reynolds, M. , Nag Velaga, Y. , Maack, J. , Tiwari, S. , Roy, J. , Tombari, C. , Mendoza Carrillo, I. , Yang, X. , Iyengar, S. and John, W. (2021), Use of Traveling Wave Signatures in Medium Voltage Distribution Systems for fault detection and location, Technical Report of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, [online], https://doi.org/10.2172/1814596, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=931951 (Accessed December 7, 2024)