Network-integrated adaptive protection for feeders with distributed generations

Connections of distributed generations (DGs) powered by renewable energy resources on power systems start to show benefits but cause new concerns in system operations such as challenges in feeder protections. This paper proposes a new strategy for network-integrated adaptive protection and control of distribution feeders connected with DGs. The proposed strategy provides intelligent network-enabled protections for DG-connected feeders and overcomes DGs-imposed protection challenges such as increase of fault levels, change of prescribed fault flow paths, mis-coordinated tripping, unintentional islanding operations, non-interruptible fault currents, etc., and nonDG-caused problems such as undetected high-impedance ground faults. This paper presents a new architecture for monitoring / protecting network of multiple (over-hundred) feeder nodes. This architecture consists of four layers: backbone network, area domains, local domains, and cell units. The architecture is fault tolerant and has features from the classical star and ring architectures. The design, implementation, case studies, and field tests validation for the proposed network-integrated adaptive feeder protection are provided.