Distribution System Protection with PV Plants Using Q-Axis Components

Distribution System Protection with PV Plants Using Q-Axis Components

Publication Date : 2023-07-13
Author(s) :

Akhil A P
Conference Name :

7th International Conference on Recent Innovations in Computer and Communication (ICRICC 23)
Abstract :

Satisfying fault ride through requirements, solar photovoltaic (PV) plant remains connected to the grid even during a fault. With the current limiting feature, the plant current during a fault becomes comparable to its rated current. This imposes challenges to conventional local data based protection methods employed in the relay on PV side. In such a situation, the selectivity of a protection scheme is crucial for maintaining an uninterrupted supply to customers. In this article, a q axis component based protection scheme is proposed for the distribution system with a PV plant. The method extracts the second order harmonic components of q axis voltage and current at relaying points for fault detection and direction identification. Using this direction information at both ends of a line segment is protected, internal and external faults are discriminated. The performance of the proposed method is tested on a 14 bus distribution system for various fault cases. A comparative analysis with existing techniques shows the strength of the proposed method. Hardware in loop testing using OPAL RT simulator as a system and Arduino NANO microcontroller as relay validates the performance of the proposed method in real time.

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