Date of Award

8-2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Engineering (MSE)

Department

Electrical and Computer Engineering (Holcomb Dept. of)

Committee Chair/Advisor

Sukumar Brahma

Committee Member

Ramtin Hadidi

Committee Member

Christopher Edrington

Abstract

The penetration of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) into the Electric Power System (EPS) is increasing. These (DERs) are mostly inverter-based resources (IBRs) that are integrated into (EPS) at the distribution level. Therefore, it has become necessary to leverage the integration of (IBRs) for both commercial and residential distribution systems through the deployment of Microgrid (MG). However, existing distribution systems that use fuses for sensing and isolating faults are not equipped to handle protection of microgrids where fault currents are fed from multiple sources and can flow downstream or upstream. Bulk of the protection schemes proposed in literature are heavily dependent on topology of distribution systems and connection status and location of IBRs. They also assume measurements at medium voltage (MV) buses which can be expensive.

To overcome these issues this thesis develops a source agnostic and topology agnostic protection scheme for microgrids using sensors at the low voltage (LV) side of all transformers feeding customers or connecting IBRs. The purpose is to have relatively inexpensive sensing across the microgrid. Synchronized voltages and current phasors are assumed to be transmitted by these sensors to a relay built in the central microgrid controller. A survey of existing commercial sensors is presented to justify this assumption.

Using this sensing mechanism, a novel scheme to detect a fault, identify the type of fault, and determine the faulted feeder-section is developed from fundamentals and extensively tested on the IEEE 13-bus feeder in grid connected and islanded modes with up to 100 % IBR penetration, clearly demonstrating the source and topology agnostic nature of the method. This scheme is intended to be a part of the Fault Location Isolation and Service Restoration (FLISR) module for microgrid.

Author ORCID Identifier

0009-0003-7820-3676

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