Summary
Keeping selectivity among protective devices in electrical grids is of crucial importance. This task in the combinatorial protection scheme of distance and directional overcurrent relays (DOCRs) stands as a complicated problem, especially in interconnected networks. To overcome this issue, this paper proposes an enhanced protection coordination (PC) scheme by employing dual time‐current characteristics (D‐TCCs) for overcurrent relays which are followed by two inverse‐time curves in series. These characteristics simplify the complexity of the problem and yield higher flexibility and extensibility in PC process which helps to meet selectivity requirements. However, these characteristics can be implemented by numerical DOCRs which poses investment costs. Therefore, a techno‐economic optimal replacement model is devised to attain a least‐cost numerical DOCRs deployment plan while eliminating miscoordination and minimizing total operation time of the relays. Furthermore, inverse‐time curves of DOCRs are selected optimally among available options for conventional relays. By doing so, the attained flexibility is intensified which lessens imparted economic burden through alleviating the replacement level of numerical DOCRs. The proposed approach calls the need for making amendments in coordination points to handle coordination problem in the case where both conventional DOCRs and numerical DOCRs with D‐TCCs are present. Therefore, coupled with the conventional selectivity constraints, the constraint associated with new coordination points are all together accommodated in the optimization process. The proposed model demonstrates a mixed integer nonlinear programming fashion which is solved with sine‐cosine algorithm. Several numerical studies are carried out to interrogate the validity of the proposed approach. The obtained results are encouraging.