Practical computation of di/dt for high-speed protection of DC microgrids

Li, Chunpeng and Rakhra, Puran and Norman, Patrick and Niewczas, Pawel and Burt, Graeme and Clarkson, Paul; (2017) Practical computation of di/dt for high-speed protection of DC microgrids. In: 2017 Second IEEE International Conference on DC Microgrids (ICDCM). IEEE, Piscataway, NJ. ISBN 9781509044795 (https://doi.org/10.1109/ICDCM.2017.8001037)

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Abstract

DC microgrids have the potential to radically disrupt the distribution system market due to the benefits offered in easing the integration and control of distributed renewable energy resources and energy storage systems. However, the nonzero-crossing fault current profiles associated with short-circuited DC systems present a major challenge for protection. Isolation of faulted networks prior to the peak-current discharge of DC side capacitors may address this challenge if rapid fault detection speeds (shorter than 2ms) can be achieved. Accordingly, novel methods of utilizing the rate-of-change-of-current (di/dt) have been proposed in the literature to realize new, high-speed distance protection strategies. This paper proposes two practical methods for optimizing the numerical computation of di/dt of fault current transients and evaluates the performance of each within a MATLAB/Simulink model of a DC microgrid with artificially injected measurement noise.