Adaptive protection methodology in microgrid for fault location and nature detection using q0 components of fault current

The dynamic behaviour of microgrid system under faulty conditions makes adaptive protection a general necessity for reliable microgrid operation. In design of adaptive protection, the grid-connected and islanded modes have immense importance including grid-connected mode without distributed generators (DGs) in microgrid. In this study, a new adaptive protection scheme is proposed based on the above-mentioned modes of microgrid operation. The proposed method considers nature of DGs connected, fault location detection and fault nature identification based on quadrature and zero sequence components of fault current considering impact of X/R ratio of DGs. The proposed methodologies for adaptive protection schemes are verified in Matlab-Simulink environment and the results are found to be satisfactory while various faults are simulated at different nodes of the microgrid model. At the time of verification of effectiveness of the proposed methodologies, the time derivative of quadrature and zero-axis components of fault current are considered sufficient to instantaneously detect the fault location and fault nature in microgrid system.