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In recent years, more and more evidence suggests that the global energy system is on the verge of a drastic revolution. The evolutionary development in power electronic technologies, the emerging highperformance energy storage devices, as well as the ever increasing penetration of renewable energy sources (RES) are commonly recognized as the major driven force of the revolution, the outburst of customer electronics and new kinds of household electronics is also powering this change. In this context, dc power distribution technologies have made a comeback and keep gaining a commendable increase in research interests and industrial applications. In addition, the concept of flexible and smart distribution has also been proposed, which tends to exploit distributed generation and pack the distributed RESs and local electrical loads as an independent and self-sustainable entity, namely microgrid. At present, the research of dc microgrid has investigated and developed a series of advanced methods in control, management and objective-oriented optimization, which would found the technical interface enabling the future applications in multiple industrial areas, such as smart buildings, electric vehicles, aerospace/aircraft power systems, as well as maritime power systems.

DC microgrids have attracted significant attention over the last decade in both academia and industry. DC microgrids have demonstrated superiority over AC microgrids with respect to reliability, efficiency, control simplicity, integration of renewable energy sources, and connection of dc loads. Despite these numerous advantages, designing and implementing an appropriate protection system for dc microgrids remains a significant challenge. The challenge stems from the rapid rise of dc fault current which must be extinguished in the absence of naturally occurring zero crossings, potentially leading to sustained arcs. In this paper, the challenges of DC microgrid protection are investigated from various aspects including, dc fault current characteristics, ground systems, fault detection methods, protective devices, and fault location methods. In each part, a comprehensive review has been carried out. Finally, future trends in the protection of DC microgrids are briefly discussed.

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