Testing a communication assisted protection scheme for AC microgrid in a laboratory setup

The dynamic behavior of microgrid compromises the security and selectivity in conventional protection schemes. Islanding mode of operation provides continuous power supply to customers. Mesh configuration of microgrid can further improves the reliability. However, protection of mesh microgrid is a challenging task especially the isolation of faulted part only with rest of the system in operation. This paper presents a communication assisted protection scheme using negative sequence based voltage and current information of a microgrid. Using the change in angle difference of negative sequence voltage and current from pre-fault to fault case, method identifies the fault is internal or external. A hardware setup is established in the laboratory and performance of the relay algorithm is tested. Arduino uno microcontroller board is used as relay processor and XBee module is used for wireless communication.