Extending IEC 61850-7-420 for distributed generators with fault current limiters

The growing number of Distributed Energy Resource (DER) deployments in Electrical Networks (ENs) have significant impacts on existing networks. In an effort to control these impacts, it is proposed to divide them into more manageable smaller sets which are called `microgrids'. Unlike conventional utility grids, microgrids include generators, storage devices and loads at all levels of the system. Power generation, distribution and consumption levels are not discrete and power flow may occur at any direction. Furthermore, some microgrids may have changing structures with alternative paths and the coupling point for a device or a part of the microgrid may change due to the altering conditions. In order to sustain a safe operation in such a versatile and dynamic structure, which has numerous parameters and variables (data) to be monitored, communicated and controlled, a new management strategy with extensive communication capability is required. The need of extensive communication between the microgrid components is widely accepted in the Power Engineering field. In an effort to standardize the communication methods and the data to be communicated, the IEC 61850 standard is issued by International Electrotechnical Commission. Currently, there are studies underway to extend this standard with IEC 61850-7-420 so that DERs can also be modeled in a standard way. This paper focuses on the review of IEC 61850-7-420 and its implementation for DER modeling. It also proposes an extension for devices with fault current limiters, a feature not previously included in the existing published standards.