Open AccessMulti‐terminal medium voltage DC grids fault location and isolation
Author(s) -
Monadi Mehdi,
KochCiobotaru Cosmin,
Luna Alvaro,
Ignacio Candela Jose,
Rodriguez Pedro
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
iet generation, transmission and distribution
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.92
H-Index - 110
eISSN - 1751-8695
pISSN - 1751-8687
DOI - 10.1049/iet-gtd.2016.0183
Subject(s) - backup , converters , fault (geology) , terminal (telecommunication) , isolation (microbiology) , circuit breaker , computer science , voltage source , network access protection , voltage , fault detection and isolation , engineering , reliability engineering , electronic engineering , electrical engineering , computer network , microbiology and biotechnology , seismology , geology , database , actuator , biology
Voltage source converters (VSCs) are highly vulnerable to DC fault current; thus, protection is one of the most important concerns associated with the implementation of multi‐terminal VSC‐based DC networks. This study proposes a protection strategy for medium voltage DC distribution systems. The strategy consists of a communication‐assisted fault location method and a fault isolation scheme that provides an economic, fast and selective protection by means of using the minimum number of DC circuit breakers. This study also introduces a backup protection which is activated if communication network fails. The effectiveness of the proposed protection strategy is analysed through real‐time simulation studies by use of the hardware‐in‐the‐loop approach. Furthermore, the effects of fault isolation process on the connected loads are also investigated. The results show that the proposed strategy can effectively protect multi‐terminal DC distribution networks and VSC stations against different types of faults.