Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
I. INTRODUCTION
Microgrid systems can be divided into ac-bus and dc-bus sys-
tems, based on the bus to which the component systems are con-
A. Proposed Controller
This paper proposes a novel protection scheme for the dc-bus
microgrid system. Instead of shutting down the whole system or Fig. 4. Implementation of the proposed protection scheme. Arrows denote the
limiting the bus current, the proposed scheme detects the fault switching action when a fault is detected.
and separates the faulted section so that the rest of the system
keeps operating. The loop-type dc bus is suggested for the pro-
posed scheme to make the system robust under faulted con- B. Fault Detection and Isolation
ditions. It has also been reported that the loop-type bus has a The master controller monitors the difference of two current
good system efficiency especially when the distribution line is readings of slave controllers in a segment
not long [23]. The entire loop will be divided into a series of
segments between subsystems. Each segment will consist of a (3)
section of bus (positive and negative lines or positive line and
ground) and a segment controller. The conceptual diagram of where and is the line current at each end of the bus
the proposed protection scheme is shown in Fig. 3. The protec- segment. When the difference exceeds the threshold, the con-
tion system is shown only in segment A, and controllers on other troller sends the appropriate commands to slave controllers so
segments are omitted. that the faulted segment can be separated from the system. Be-
The proposed protection system consists of one master con- cause the proposed system uses the differential relaying prin-
troller, two slave controllers, and freewheeling branches be- ciple monitoring only the relative difference of input and output
tween each line and ground. The slave controllers read the cur- current of a segment, it can detect the fault on the bus regardless
rent at each end of the bus segment connecting two components of fault current amplitude or power supplys feeding capacity.
and send it to the master controller. They also operate the bidi- Once the faulted segment has been isolated, the bus voltage will
rectional solid-state switches on the bus segment and the free- be restored and remainder of the system can continue to operate
wheeling branch according to the commands from the master on the loop-type bus. Even with multiple faulted segments, the
controller. In the course of normal operations, the currents mea- system can operate partially if the segments from some power
sured at each end of the bus segment should be nearly iden- sources to loads are intact. The possibility of the fault around the
tical and the master controller sends commands to put the bus device connection point can be minimized if the segment con-
switches on normal positions. trollers are installed as close to the connection point as possible.
782 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 28, NO. 2, APRIL 2013
Fig. 5. Fault current and operation of the proposed protection scheme. (a) Line-to-ground fault between point A to G. (b) Isolated line-to-ground fault. (c) Line-to-
line fault between point A and B. (d) Isolated line-to-line fault.
The implementation of the proposed protection scheme is of insufficient capacity. This is especially true for the VSC-in-
shown in Fig. 4, which shows the configuration of segment A terfaced microgrid systems. Furthermore, the fault current needs
in Fig. 3. Semiconductor-based bidirectional switches and to be extinguished as quickly as possible even if the system has
diodes are used for segment separation and fault current sufficient current feeding capacity. Therefore, one of the best
freewheeling, respectively. In normal operations, switches solutions would be to isolate the faulted line as soon as possible
are closed and diodes are open. When a fault occurs, the and continue operation with intact bus segments and subsys-
master controller detects it using the current information from tems. To achieve this, the segment controller needs to be capable
the slave controllers and opens switches. Diodes are of fast differential current detection and bus switch control. An
conducting at the same time to form a freewheeling path for automatic reclosing algorithm would be necessary for fault re-
fault currents so that the switches can open and the fault covery and more robust operation [24].
current can be extinguished through resistors. The segment con-
trollers can detect the fault current of the line-to-ground fault C. Snubber Circuit
(from point A or B to G) and line-to-line fault (from point A
to B). A turnoff snubber circuit is included for switches to Snubber circuits are indispensable to protect the solid-state
limit the voltage overshoot due to the line inductance. CBs from the voltage transient due to the inductance of the
The line-to-ground fault and the line-to-line fault are shown bus cable. It is more so especially in a loop-type bus where
in Fig. 5. It can be seen that the fault current is isolated and the line inductance exists on both sides of the CB unlike
extinguished in the freewheeling loop. The freewheeling path the point-to-point-type system. Although the fault current
impedance determines the extinction rate of the fault current, needs to be interrupted as quickly as possible, the high
which can be given as follows: could make the transient voltage catastrophically high for the
solid-state switches. There are a couple of snubber circuit
topologies to suppress the overvoltage at turn-off due to line
(4) inductance, such as decoupling capacitor, discharge restricted
decoupling capacitor, discharge-charge-type RCD snubber,
where and represent the resistance and inductance in and discharge-suppressing-type RCD snubber [25]. It has
the freewheeling path, respectively. been reported that the decoupling capacitor has low losses
When a line-to-ground or a line-to-line fault occurs in the dis- but also oscillation issues, and RCD snubbers have higher
tribution line, the bus voltage collapse would not allow the load losses but no oscillation problem and good for higher current
to ride through if the current is limited from the source because applications [26]. Since the solid-state CBs do not switch in
PARK AND CANDELARIA: FAULT DETECTION AND ISOLATION IN LV DC-BUS MICROGRID SYSTEM 783
Fig. 7. Simulation circuit for the line-to-ground fault in the three-node microgrid system that contains two sources and a load. A fault is simulated in the segment
between source 1 and load.
TABLE I
SIMULATION PARAMETERS
Fig. 9. Simulation: Load voltage with and without protection (top) and current Fig. 11. Simulation: Voltage of bus segments B and C (top) and currents of
in a freewheeling path in the proposed scheme (bottom). segment C and (bottom). Intact segment C currents (incoming) and
(outgoing) are identical.
the same IGBT has been utilized to form the ground fault path.
Fig. 10. Simulation: Voltage across switch at turnoff without (top) and
with (bottom) the snubber. IGCTs can be considered for lower conduction losses. The free-
wheeling path has an IR diode T40HF60 and a 2- freewheeling
resistor. Using a diode in the freewheeling branch simplifies the
by the currents flowing into and out of the intact bus segment control circuits and it can be used for the line-to-ground fault
C shown in Fig. 11. Even with the transient caused by the fault protection. The RCD snubber circuit is attached to the IGBT
on the bus segment A, the incoming and outgoing currents with a 10- F capacitor, a 12- resistor, and a diode T40HF60.
of segment C are identical. The proposed scheme that detects The circuit parameters have not been scaled down because of
the current difference is robust to common-mode noise and the inductance in the power supplies. The schematic of the ex-
transient due to a fault. perimental test bed is shown in Fig. 12.
The differential protection algorithm described in
VI. EXPERIMENTAL VALIDATION Section IV-B is implemented in TIs TMS320F28335 dig-
A lab-scale experiment setup in about 6:1 scale from the sim- ital signal processing (DSP) microcontroller. As shown in
ulation circuit has been built to validate the feasibility of the pro- Fig. 12, the controller monitors the source and load-side current
posed protection scheme with actual hardware. The setup has a using Tektronics A622 current probes through analog-to-digital
source-load-storage structure of Fig. 3, but only with positive channels of DSP, and controls the IGBT CBs. A threshold of
pole and ground to simulate a line-to-ground fault. Two chan- 20% has been used for (3) in the experiments, but the threshold
nels of 30-V 3-A power supply Instek GPC-3030D have been level may vary depending on bus conditions to increase sensi-
utilized for 20-V source and energy storage, and 12.5- resis- tivity or to avoid malfunction. The controller sends out a digital
tive load is used. Each source supplies about 1 A of load current output to the gate driver board, which generates isolated gating
in normal operation. Three 15- H inductors and six 220-pF ca- signal using optocoupler HCPL-3120. In this experiment, the
pacitors are installed in the positive line to simulate the line in- analog-digital conversion of the current measurement is done
ductance and stray capacitance, respectively. But no resistance in the 100- s interrupt service routine. Although the controller
has been added in the bus due to the low current capacity of the takes the analog signal directly from the current sensors because
power supply. Two IXYS 600 V IGBT IXGN60N60C2D1 mod- of the small size of the test bed, digital communication between
ules have been used to make a bidirectional solid-state CB and the master and slave controller should be considered for larger
786 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 28, NO. 2, APRIL 2013
scale systems. Distributed control without the master controller experiment. Without protection, 6-A fault current flows from
can be possible if the two slave controllers are communicating two power-supply channels after transient. Fig. 15 shows that
with each other. The experimental test bed is shown in Fig. 13. the load voltage is restored to a normal level quickly after the
A line-to-ground fault has been experimentally tested. In faulted segment is separated; otherwise, it collapses to a low
normal steady-state condition, the source power supply supplies voltage without the protection system. Fig. 16 shows that the
20 W of power (20 V, 1 A) to the load and the power-supply snubber circuit effectively suppresses the voltage overshoot and
simulating energy storage monitors the bus voltage. When the oscillation across the IGBT.
ground fault IGBT is turned on, two power-supply channels
feed the fault current, and the segment controller measures VII. CONCLUSION
the current shown in Fig. 14. The difference is quite large This paper has presented a fault detection and isolation
because the direction of the load-side current is reversed unlike scheme for the low-voltage dc-bus microgrid system. The
the simulation due to the low fault impedance. The controller proposed protection scheme consists of segment controllers
readily detects the difference of the bus currents and isolates capable of detecting abnormal fault current in the bus and
the faulted segment immediately. It turned out that the power separating the faulted segment to avoid the entire system
supply can feed about 40-A peak transient fault current for a shutdown. A loop-type dc-bus-based microgrid system with
couple hundred microseconds before each channel settles down segment controllers between connected components and the
to 3 A of the power supplys rated current. It should be noted freewheeling branch has been proposed. The proposed pro-
that this power-supply characteristic makes the waveform of tection concepts have been validated by computer simulations
experimental fault current different from that of the simulation and experiments. A prototype system with a segment controller
in Fig. 8. that consists of master and slave controllers has been tested
Fig. 14 shows that the fault current is extinguished to zero on an actual hardware test bed and it has shown successful
as simulated. The fault current extinction time, which depends fault detection and isolation capability. The proposed scheme
on the freewheeling path impedance, was about 100 s in this can be applied to dc power systems, such as Green Buildings,
PARK AND CANDELARIA: FAULT DETECTION AND ISOLATION IN LV DC-BUS MICROGRID SYSTEM 787
with sustainable energy resources and data centers with a [20] F. Luo, J. Chen, X. Lin, Y. Kang, and S. Duan, A novel solid state fault
server array. Challenges, such as a reduction of conduction current limiter for DC power distribution network, in Proc. IEEE 23rd
Annu. Appl. Power Electron. Conf. Expo., Feb. 2008, pp. 12841289.
loss in the solid-state CBs and fault ridethrough capability, and [21] W. Fei, Y. Zhang, and Z. Lu, Novel bridge-type FCL based on self-
fault-location techniques need to be investigated. turnoff devices for three-phase power systems, IEEE Trans. Power
Del., vol. 23, no. 4, pp. 20682078, Oct. 2008.
REFERENCES [22] U. Ghisla, I. Kondratiev, and R. Dougal, Branch circuit protection for
DC systems, in Proc. IEEE Elect. Ship Technol. Symp., Apr. 2011, pp.
[1] R. Dugan and T. McDermott, Distributed generation, IEEE Ind.
234239.
Appl. Mag., vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 1925, Mar./Apr. 2002.
[23] M. Saisho, T. Ise, and K. Tsuji, Configuration of DC loop type
[2] F. Blaabjerg, R. Teodorescu, M. Liserre, and A. Timbus, Overview
quality control center, in Proc. Power Convers. Conf., 2002, vol. 2,
of control and grid synchronization for distributed power generation
pp. 434439.
systems, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 53, no. 5, pp. 13981407,
[24] J. Machowski, J. Bialek, and J. Bumby, Power System Dynamics: Sta-
Oct. 2006.
bility and Control. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2011.
[3] U.S. Department of Energy, (2009). States With Renewable Portfolio
[25] N. Mohan, T. Undeland, and W. Robbins, Power Electronics Con-
Standards. [Online]. Available: http://www..energy.ca.gov/renewables
verters, Applications, Design, 3rd ed. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2003.
[4] U.S. Department of Energy Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
[26] Y. Zhang, S. Sobhani, and R. Chokhawala, Snubber considerations for
News, (2010). Colorado Boosts its Renewable Energy Requirement to
IGBT applications, 2002. [Online]. Available: www.irf.com/technical-
30% by 2020. [Online]. Available: http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/news/
info/designtp/tpap-5.pdf
news\_detail.cfm/news\_id=15878
[27] B. Jacobson and J. Walker, Grounding considerations for dc and
[5] R. Lasseter and P. Paigi, Microgrid: A conceptual solution, in
mixed dc and ac power systems, Naval Eng. J., vol. 119, no. 2, pp.
Proc. 35th Annu. IEEE Power Electron. Specialists Conf., 2004, pp.
4962, October 2007.
42854290.
[28] D. Paul, DC traction power system grounding, IEEE Trans. Ind.
[6] H. Nikkhajoei and R. Lasseter, Distributed generation interface to
Appl., vol. 38, no. 3, pp. 818824, May/Jun. 2002.
the CERTS microgrid, IEEE Trans. Power Del., vol. 24, no. 3, pp.
[29] IEC 60364-1 Low-Voltage Electrical InstallationsPart 1: Funda-
15981608, Jul. 2009.
mental Principles, Assessment of General Characteristics, Definitions,
[7] F. Katiraei, R. Iravani, N. Hatziargyriou, and A. Dimeas, Microgrids
IEC 60364-1, 2005.
management, IEEE Power Energy Mag., vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 5465, May/
[30] R. Kamel, A. Chaouaski, and K. Nagasaka, Design and testing of three
Jun. 2008.
earthing systems for micro-grid protection during the islanding mode,
[8] D. Salomonsson, L. Soder, and A. Sannino, Protection of low-voltage
Smart Grid Renew. Energy, vol. 1, pp. 132142, Sep. 2010.
DC microgrids, IEEE Trans. Power Del., vol. 24, no. 3, pp.
[31] Transmission Line Reference Book 345 kV and Above, Elect. Power
10451053, Jul. 2009.
Res. Inst., 1987.
[9] M. Saeedifard, M. Graovac, R. Dias, and R. Iravani, DC power sys-
tems: Challenges and opportunities, in Proc. IEEE Power Energy Soc.
Gen. Meeting, July 2010, pp. 17.
[10] R. Cuzner and G. Venkataramanan, The status of DC micro-grid pro-
tection, in Proc. IEEE Ind. Appl. Soc. Annu. Meeting, Oct. 2008, pp. Jae-Do Park (M07) received the Ph.D. degree in
18. electrical engineering from the Pennsylvania State
[11] P. Salonen, P. Nuutinen, P. Peltoniemi, and J. Partanen, LVDC dis- University, University Park, in 2007.
tribution system protection: Solutions, implementation and measure- Currently, he is an Assistant Professor of Elec-
ments, in Proc. 13th Eur. Conf. Power Electron. Appl., 2009, pp. 110. trical Engineering at the University of Colorado
[12] J. Candelaria and J.-D. Park, VSC-HVDC system protection: A re- Denver, Denver, CO, USA. Prior to his arrival at
view of current methods, in Proc. IEEE/Power Energy Soc. Power the University of Colorado Denver, he was Manager
Syst. Conf. Expo., Mar. 2011, pp. 17. of Software and Controls for Pentadyne Power
[13] J. Das and R. Osman, Grounding of AC and DC low-voltage and Corporation, CA, where he took charge of control
medium-voltage drive systems, IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 34, no. algorithm design and software development for the
1, pp. 205216, Jan./Feb. 1998. high-speed flywheel energy-storage system. He is
[14] P. Cairoli, R. Dougal, U. Ghisla, and I. Kondratiev, Power sequencing interested in various energy and power system research and education topics,
approach to fault isolation in dc systems: Influence of system parame- including electric machines and drives, energy-storage and harvesting systems,
ters, in Proc. IEEE Energy Convers. Congr. Expo., 2010, pp. 7278. renewable energy sources, grid-interactive distributed generation, microturbine
[15] L. Tang and B. Ooi, Locating and isolating DC faults in multi-terminal control, and microgrid systems.
DC systems, IEEE Trans. Power Del., vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 18771884,
Jul. 2007.
[16] H. Iwamoto, K. Satoh, M. Yamamoto, and A. Kawakami, High-power
semiconductor device: A symmetric gate commutated turn-off Jared Candelaria (S10) is currently pursuing the
thyristor, Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng., Elect. Power Appl., vol. 148, no. 4, M.S.E.E. degree in power options at the University
pp. 363368, Jul. 2001. of Colorado Denver, Denver, CO, USA.
[17] Y. Ito, Y. Zhongqing, and H. Akagi, DC micro-grid based distribu- He is an Electrical Engineer at NEI Electric Power
tion power generation system, presented at the 4th Int. Conf. Power Engineering, Arvada, CO. His duties at NEI include
Electron. Motion Control, Xian, China, Aug. 2004. arc flash, interconnection of distributed generation,
[18] R. Schmerda, S. Krstic, E. Wellner, and A. Bendre, IGCTs vs. IGBTs supervisory control and data acquisition, substation
for circuit breakers in advanced ship electrical systems, in Proc. IEEE design, industrial design, and protective relaying.
Electric Ship Technol. Symp., Apr. 2009, pp. 400405. His research interests include power systems appli-
[19] P. Steimer, O. Apeldoorn, E. Carroll, and A. Nagel, IGCT technology cations, power system protection, and HVDC.
baseline and future opportunities, in Proc. IEEE/Power Energy Soc. Mr. Candelaria is a registered E.I.T. in the state of
Transm. Distrib. Conf. Expo., 2001, vol. 2, pp. 11821187. Colorado.