Assessment of PMU-based wide-area angle criterion for fault detection in microgrid

The penetration of distributed generation in the power distribution system has increased significantly in recent years, bringing serious protection challenges. Hence, it is mandated to develop effective and reliable fault detection scheme for present-day microgrid environment. This study presents a phasor measurement unit-based (PMU) wide-area phase angle criterion for building a protection system for the microgrid. The absolute value of the rate of change of voltage phase angle difference between the point of common coupling and the bus closest to the fault point is utilised for fault detection in grid connected as well as in the islanded modes of operation. C37.118.1 complied PMUs are employed at the appropriate locations for accurate and faithful measurement of voltage phase angle and the rate of angle difference (RAD) for detecting faulted conditions. PMUs are connected to phasor data concentrator, which receives the time synchronised phasor data and acts as a centralised processing unit. The proposed protection index has been extensively validated on MATLAB/Simulink environment as well as the real-time digital simulator with external PMUs. The test results show that the proposed RAD is a potential candidate for providing effective fault detection measure for microgrid including large variations in operating conditions.