Investigating the performance of an R-Criterion based protection method when applied on PV Solar microgrid

Microgrids have become an attractive way of integrating several distributed generators to the utility network via a common point of coupling (PCC) to minimize network complexity and improve stability, amongst other attributes. Africa receives an abundance of solar radiation. Solar PV have, rightly, become a popular alternative clean energy. However, because of the nature of solar radiation, produced power is intermittent. On top of this, the power electronics used to integrate PV solar systems into the grid have limited maximum allowable current. These attributes negatively impact the capability of existing protection systems and thus the call to find effective protection solutions. R-Criterion was identified as a potential fault detection system. However, it is unable to detect a balanced 3-phase fault as well as differentiating a balanced 3-phase fault from a switched load in the network.