A Novel Method of Fault Location for Single-Phase Microgrids

Abstract

This paper presents a novel fault location method for single-phase microgrids. In order to locate a fault, a feature specific to the fault location is found, namely the maximum oscillation magnitude of the transient voltage signal induced by the fault. Our theoretical study and extensive simulations demonstrate that there is an approximated linear relationship between the maximum magnitude of the transient signal observed by a sensor, and the distance between the sensor and the fault location. Based on the discovered relationship, microgrid topology and sensor location information, we have designed an algorithm capable of locating the fault in the single-phase microgrids. The proposed fault location method has been implemented and validated through simulations in Electro-Magnetic TransientsProgram and MATLAB. The average localization error is less than 10% in the evaluation results, which manifests the significance of the novel method, as there is little research done for fault location in single-phase microgrids.

A hybrid algorithm for fault locating in looped microgrids

“…The benefit of this method is that there is no need to implement relays for the each line. Then, an advanced signal processing method based on wavelet transform (WT) and optimized two/multi support vector machine (OSVM) is proposed for the purpose of fault detection or fault location [18], [21]- [22]. However, for a system with high penetration of DGs, the tremendous amounts of data gathered from DGs have to be analyzed to locate the fault.…”

“…In [18], [21]- [22], whole measured data was considered for the task of fault detection or fault classification. However, the computation time will dramatically increase for a large system and correspondingly higher computation time is required for analyzing.…”

“…On the other hand, the methods based on utilizing voltage sensors have the problem of multiple fault-location estimations in the looped microgrid. Because two fault points are suggested for a specific voltage drop [18], [26]. In this paper, a new method based on voltage harmonic injection is proposed to confine whole search space to the area between two DGs.…”

“…On the other hand, in MG the protection relays are implemented in the distribution generations (DGs) and important loads but there is no relays for transmission line [18]. In [18], relays for distribution lines had been eliminated and the fault was located based on an approximated linear relationship between of maximum oscillation of magnitude of the transient voltage signal. However, this strategy is not applicable to locate a fault in the looped MG.…”

Community Microgrid Planning Considering Building Thermal Dynamics

“…Specifically, the first line in (3) denotes the investment in wind turbines and PV panels and the second line represents the investment in DFG and ESS. With respect to the annualized operation cost, i.e., (4), several representing days are selected. The first line in (4) indicates the operation cost for DFG which includes three terms.…”