Multi-Agent Approach for Overcurrent Protection Coordination in Low Voltage Microgrids

This paper presents an agent-based overcurrent protection scheme to rapidly detect and identify short-circuit faults in microgrids. Short circuit faults are credible contingencies, which often constitute adverse stress on microgrids. The faster protection of microgrids with the increased penetration of renewable energy (RE)-based distributed generation (DG) units is a complex process, which leave a great challenge for distribution network service providers (DNSPs) and protection engineers. Therefore, it is necessary to protect the microgrids against short circuit faults by using a reliable protection scheme to ensure a proper overcurrent relay coordination. In this paper, a multi-agent communication framework is developed to coordinate the digital overcurrent protection relays via information exchange. A benchmark IEEE 13-node distribution network along with RE-based DG units is considered as test microgrid to evaluate the effectiveness of the agent-based protection scheme under both symmetric and asymmetric fault scenarios.