Impact of Distributed Generation on Traditional Protection in Distribution and Transmission Systems: A Review

This paper presents a review of the effects that distributed generation (DG) systems have on traditional protection scheme of transmission and distribution networks. This review will serve as the direction on an ongoing research being conducted by the authors on the ways of mitigating the impacts of DGs on traditional protection in Distribution and Transmission systems in Namibia. The presence of DG alters the operation of protection scheme as it imposes the flow of power from an end user to substations. The paper highlighted the impacts of DG on feeder protection which include Blinding of protection and false tripping of protection devices. Measures on how to prevent the negative impacts caused by DG on overhead medium voltage networks are also presented and include increasing autoreclose open time, installing voltage relays and introducing anti-islanding protection. These findings will be used to come up with new designs and recommendations on how the Namibian distribution and transmission protection issues in the presence of DGs can be addressed.