Assessment of Protective Device Sensitivity with Increasing Penetration of Distributed Energy Resources

The integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) into the distribution grid has improved the reliability of power networks along with significant reduction in transmission power loss. However, embedding distributed generation (DG) can produce significant protection issues for the electrical utilities such as incorrect protection coordination and increased protective device sensitivity. This paper proposes a platform to analyze the potential sensitivity deterioration issues in different protective devices (PDs) in the presence of an increasing DG penetration and its location. The impacts of the fault impedance and the fault location on the potential increase of the sensitivity of the PDs have been assessed. This paper proposes a methodology to maintain protection selectivity among different PDs to avoid their false alarm and wrong operation when DGs are connected to the distribution grid. The IEEE 13-node test system has been utilized to test and validate the proposed approach.