Adaptive Over Current Protection for Distribution
Feeders with Distributed Generators
Mesut Baran
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC
Abstract--The connection of distributed generators (DG) to
distribution networks influences the performance of the
networks. This paper focuses on the impact of DG on the feeder
protection, specifically the impact on the overcurrent (OC) relay
performance. The paper presents simulation results to show the
extent of deterioration a DG can cause on the OC relay
performance. The paper then presents an approach to solve this
problem and restore the overcurrent relay performance.
Index Terms—Adaptive Protection, Distributed Generators,
Feeder Protection, Over-Current Relay.
I. INTRODUCTION
I t is expected that Distributed Generation (DG) is going to be
an alternative for supplying power to some consumers.
Instead of producing power using remote and large generator
units, power will be generated using a large number of small
distributed generators to meet the load demand. These small
generators produce power at low voltage level and are
connected directly to the distribution network near the load
center.
There are two main types of distributed generators in the
market. The first type produces dc power and needs an
inverter to convert its output dc power into ac power, such as
fuel cells, micro-turbine, and photovoltaic cells. The second
type directly produces ac power such as the diesel generators
and wind turbines. In this study we will focus only on inverter
interfaced DGs.
The distribution network topology, control and protection
are designed assuming that power is flowing in one direction;
from substation to loads. The connection of a distributed
generator to the feeders of the distribution network can cause
the power flow to be bi-directional instead of uni-directional
affecting the network performance and stability in a number of
ways [1-6]. In this paper we will focus only on the impact of
DG on feeder protection system.1
Distribution feeders are usually radial with the loads tapped
off along the line sections. The feeder protection strategy aims
at optimizing the service continuity to the maximum number
of users. This means applying a combination of circuit
This work was supported by the office of Naval Research ( ONR ) under
award number : N000014-00-1-0475
M. Baran is with the Department of ECE, North Carolina State University,
Raleigh, NC 27695 USA (e-mail: baran@ncsu.edu).
I. Elmarkabi is with the Department of ECE, North Carolina State
University, Raleigh, NC 27695 USA (e-mail: imelmar@ncsu.edu).
Ismail El-Markabi
breakers, automatic reclosers and fuses to clear temporary and
permanent faults. The main circuit breaker at the substation
end of the feeder and reclosers on the feeder are equipped with
over-current (OC) relays to isolate any permanent fault along
the feeder. When the current seen by the relay exceeds a
certain pickup value the OC relay sends the breaker a trip
signal, the speed of tripping the fault is inversely proportional
with the fault current magnitude.
The connection of a DG to a feeder affects the feeder
protection scheme in three different areas. These areas are the
islanding phenomenon, the effect on OC relay performance
and finally the reclosure to fuse coordination [3-6]. In this
paper we will focus on the impact of DG on the feeder
overcurrent protection relay, such impact will be presented in
section two. While section three we introduce our proposed
approach for solving such problem, with simulations showing
the success of such approach.
II. IMPACT OF DG ON OVERCURRENT RELAY
PERFORMANCE
To illustrate the impact of DG on its feeder’s OC relay
performance, the prototype feeder in figure 1 is used. The
feeder’s load is assumed to be equally distributed along the
feeder. The feeder is protected with an over-current relay, and
the feeder power is supplied from the substation via a step-
down transformer. (Relevant data in Appendix A)
DG
OC-Relay
R
Substation
7 6 5 4 3 2 1
OLTCT
Load-7 Load-6 Load-5 Load-4 Load-3 Load-2 Load-1
Fig. 1. The 7 bus feeder
A. Reduced reach
Relays are set to protect a certain distance of the feeder;
this is sometimes referred to as the “reach”. The reach of the
relay is determined by its minimum pickup current. The
presence of a DG will reduce the reach of the OC relay [6],
thus leaving medium impedance faults at the end of the feeder
undetected (figure 2). The reduction in reach is due to the fact
that the presence of the DG increases the equivalent
impedance of the feeder, thus decreasing the fault current for
the same fault resistance (Rf).
Reduction in relay reach vs. DG injected power
120 for different fault resistances
Original reach 98
OC 100 100

% reduction in relay reach

DG
Reduced reach R
80 80 80
7 6 5 4 3 2 1 66
60
50
45 45
40
Rf=10.4
33
27
Rf=9.5
20
Fig. 2. Relay reach with and without DG Rf=8
3
3
0

To understand the effect of DGs on reducing the reach of 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

DG pow er as % of f eeder maximum load
80 90 100

the feeder’s OC relay, the system in figure 1 is simulated for

different fault locations. The total feeder load is 6 MVA, a 600
kW DG operating at 0.9 pf is connected to the feeder at bus 6.
The pickup current of the OC relay protecting this feeder is set
to 700 amps (appendix A).
Before connecting any DGs to the feeder, a fault at bus 7
with Rf = 10.4 Ω will create a current at the relay = 710 amps,
and the relay will trip.
After connecting the DG, the same fault will create a fault
current at the relay of 650 amps, thus the relay will not trip.
Figure 3 represents the maximum fault resistance at each
bus that will create fault current that can still be detected by
the relay at each bus with the DG connected at bus 6. For
example for a fault at bus 7, the maximum fault the relay can
detect is a fault with Rf = 9.4 Ω, any higher fault resistance
will go undetected. From the figure we can see that for a fault
with Rf = 10.4 Ω to be detected by the relay it has to be
located at least at bus 6. If the fault is further down stream it
will go undetected. For this fault resistance the reach of the
relay is reduced from 100% to 83% of the feeder length.
Figure 4 shows the effect of the amount of power injected by a
DG on the reduction in the relay reach for three different fault
resistances. The reduction in reach is increased with the
amount of power injected by the DGs. For a specific Rf as the
DG power increase the relay reach decrease, until the whole
feeder becomes unprotected against that specific fault
resistance. For example for DG total power equal 70% of
total feeder load, a fault with Rf equal 10.4 cannot be detected
along the whole feeder.
Max Detectable R fault for
I pickup= 700 amps 600 kVA DG at bus 6
15
Undetected region
13
R fault
Fig. 4: Reduction in reach vs. DG injected power
III. ADAPTIVE OVER CURRENT RELAY
As mentioned in section II, the presence of a DG will
reduce the reach of the over-current relay, thus leaving
medium impedance faults [12] at the end of the feeder
undetected. To understand why the presence of DGs will
cause such problem we simulated the prototype in section I
once without any DGs and once with only one DG connected
at bus 4; and created a fault at bus 8. We will then plot the
fault current as seen by the relay in the two cases against the
relay time-current characteristics.
The over current relay has an inverse time-current
characteristic where the tripping time gets longer as the fault
current decreases, and the tripping time is maximum for a
fault current equals to the Ipickup of the relay. The following
equation represents the relationship between the fault current
and the tripping time [12].
T1
tp = +T
(I I pick )α 2
Where tp is the time for pickup, T1 is a time constant
depending on relay design parameters, T2 is a time constant
that accounts for saturation in the magnetic circuit, α is
changed according to type of relay (inverse, extremely inverse
.. etc.), and finally Ipick is the relay set pickup current. We used
the values for these constants that represent the ABB inverse
time over-current relay type CO-8, where α = 2, T1 = 13, and
T1 = 0.59 [9, 12]. Figure 5 shows the simulation of the relay
characteristic using Matlab. In the figure we superimposed the
relay characteristics over the fault current seen by the relay.
The figure shows that for the case where there are no DGs
connected to the feeder it will take the relay about 4.9 seconds

11 Rf = 10.4
to trip. This in fact is the longest trip time because the fault
9
Detected region conditions where chosen to yield a fault current almost equal
7 to the relay minimum pickup current. The figure also shows
5
that the relay will not trip for the same fault conditions when a
7 6 5 4 3 2 1 DG is present.
Feeder bus number

Fig. 3. Maximum Rf detected at each bus with DG injecting

10% of feeder load

Fig. 5: Relay characteristic and I fault
To solve this problem we are proposing an approach to
change the relay pickup current Ipickup as seen in figure 6, such
that the Ipickup decreases as the total amount of power injected
by all DGs increase. Thus keep protecting the feeder against
the same fault conditions it was originally protected against.
But how will we get the values of the Ipickup along that curve?
To try to answer this question we need to understand how
the DG will react to a fault at the feeder, the effect of that
reaction on the fault current seen by the relay, and finally a
tool to estimate the fault current at the relay when several DGs
are connected to the feeder prior and during a fault. It is
important to mention that this study is focused only on
studying inverter interfaced DGs.
Constant pick up current
OC relay I pickup
Adaptive pick up current
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
DG power as % of feeder maximum load
Fig. 6. Constant and adaptive I-pickup
A. DG response under fault conditions
To understand the DG performance during fault conditions,
we simulated the same example mentioned earlier with a DG
connected to bus 4. The DG simulated was an inverter
interfaced fuel cell controlled with a PI controller. As shown
in figure 7; after the short circuit it took the DG only 110
millisecond to restore its P and Q set points, where Pset = 1
MW and Qset = 0 MVAR. Inverter interfaced DGs with more
sophisticated control techniques are expected to have even
shorter time duration to restore the output active and reactive
powers to setpoint values. Therefore if we neglect the DG’s
transients during the initial 0.1 seconds, we can conclude that
during a fault on the feeder the DG will continue to supply the
same amount of active power at the same power factor as it
was just before the fault.
It is important to mention that although DGs will quickly
adjust to fault conditions, yet some faults may cause the DG to
disconnect from the feeder. If the location of the fault is close
enough to the DG, that will cause the DG bus voltage to drop
below acceptable limits, this will then trigger the under
voltage relay protecting the DG to trip. The speed of the under
voltage relay is stated in the IEEE P1547 standard, where the
DG must trip within 2 seconds if bus voltage is 0.5 < VDG-bus <
0.88 p.u, and the maximum trip time should not exceed 0.16
seconds if the DG bus voltage is < 0.5 p.u. Therefore the
status of the DG during a fault on the feeder will be
determined via the under voltage protection relay.
Fig. 7: DG output power during a fault
In fact the DG reaction to fault that we just discussed is
also clearly stated in the IEEE standard 929-2000 [13] as
follows:
“Solid-state inverters do not behave like rotating
generators. Solid-state inverters have no inertia in their
output and can respond immediately to changes in the ac
power system. These inverters generally sense a short
90 100
circuit by an associated voltage drop, rather than by
actually sensing short circuit current. Thus, the voltage-trip
recommendations are really the equivalent of short circuit
protection.”
B. Effect of DG on fault current
Now we will try to understand the effect of the DG’s
response to faults on the fault current seen by the relay. We
simulated the example mentioned earlier with a 10 ohm fault
resistance, and figure 8 shows the fault current at the
substation end of the feeder; with and without DGs. The
higher curve with fewer transients shows the fault current
when there are no DGs connected to the feeder, as seen in the
figure the fault current settles to a steady state value of 708
amps after only 20 milliseconds. The lower curve is the fault
current when the DG is connected to bus 4, in this case the
fault current settles to a steady state value of 660 amps after
milliseconds. The figure also shows effect of the DG in the
transients of the fault current.

Fig. 8. Relay fault current with/without DG
C. Solution approach
As mentioned earlier our solution approach depends on
estimating the fault current at the relay, while taking into
consideration the DG location and output current. Therefore
we need first a system model. To determine our system model
we will make two approximations, the first approximation is
to neglect the transients in the DG response, that is neglect the
DG response during the first 0.1 seconds of the fault duration.
This approximation is acceptable since it is more conservative
to account only for the steady state current. This
approximation will allow us to model the DG as a current
source with constant output power during fault duration.
The other important approximation is considering the fault
current at the relay to be constant and equal to the steady state
fault current value, as seen in figure 9. This will introduce an
insignificant error that could be neglected. With these two
approximations our system model can be represented as seen
in figure 12.
Fig. 9. fault current approximation
Unfortunately, the standard short circuit analysis cannot
handle or account for a current source; therefore we need to
find another technique to solve this circuit. We propose to use
a power flow technique, where the current and voltage at
every node can be evaluated for a given DG output. This will
result in a set of nonlinear equations which can be solved
using the Gauss-Newton method. Such approach is tested and
its results were compared with the results from simulating the
feeder using PSCAD, and the current value at the relay was
found to be identical with ± 1 ampere accuracy.
Now that we estimate accurately the value of the fault
current at the relay, we can adjust the minimum pickup current
of the relay depending on the feeder configuration. As seen in
figure 10, when there are no DGs connected to the feeder in
our example, we will set the relay to a minimum pick up
current of 700 amps. When a DG is connected we can
recalculate the value of the fault current, which for this case is
660 amps, and change the relay minimum fault current setup
to 660 amps as seen in the figure. This adaptive technique will
ensure that the feeder is always protected from the same range
of faults whether DGs are connected to the feeder or not.
Fig. 10. Actual and modified relay characteristic with I fault
One last issue we need to address is the fact that some DGs
might trip during a fault for under voltage reasons. To resolve
this issue we adopted a conservative approach, which assumes
that all DGs remain online, even if some of them may trip
during the fault. This decision is justified due to the fact that
fault current seen by the relay will be higher if some of the
DGs drop during fault. Therefore the relay will trip faster than
the simulated if indeed some DGs trip. According to fig. 11 if
we set the relay pickup current to fault current when 3 DGs
are considered it will take the relay time “t2” to trip, but if
only two DGs remain connected, the actual fault current will
be higher and it will take the relay time “t1” to trip.
Relay current-time
relation fault current with 3 DGs
fault current with 2 DGs
OC relay current
0 1 t1 2 3 t2 4 5
Time for OC relay
Fig. 11. Relay minimum pickup current
IV. CONCLUSION
This paper illustrates the impact of DGs on distribution
feeders’ protection, especially on the impact of DGs on the
relay reach. Simulation results are presented to show that DGs
can have a considerable impact on the reduction of the
overcurrent relay reach. An adaptive overcurrent pickup
 I1 I2 I3 I4 I5 I6

R fault
Zfeeder Zfeeder Zfeeder Zfeeder Zfeeder Zfeeder
XS.C
I9

Load-1

Load-2

Load-6
Load-4

Load-5
I7 I8 I10 I11 I12
AC V1 DG

Fig. 12: Feeder model for fault analysis

scheme is presented. The technique updates the OC relay VI. BIOGRAPHIES

minimum pickup current based on fault analysis of the system.
And finally it is shown that the approach gives conservative
results when some DGs get disconnected during the fault.
V. REFERENCES
[1] Nick Jenkins, Ron Allan, Embedded Generation,
Published by the Institution of Electrical Engineers,
London, United Kingdom, 2000, pp.50 – 93.
[2] G. Joos, B.T. Ooi, F.D. Galiana, “The potential of
distributed generation to provide ancillary services”
IEEE Power Engineering Society Summer Meeting,
vol. 3, 2000, pp 1762 – 1767.
[3] P. Barker, “Determining the impact of DG on power
systems, radial distribution”, IEEE Power Engineering
Society Summer Meeting, vol. 3, 2000, pp 1645 -1656.
[4] M Ropp, M. Begovic, “Analysis and performance
assessment of AFD method islanding detection”,
IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion, vol. 14,
1999, pp 810 -816
[5] M. Ropp, “Determining the effectiveness of islanding
detection methods using NDZ”, Energy Conversion,
IEEE Transactions, vol. 15, 2000, pp 290 -296.
[6] Roger Dugan, “Distributed Generation”, IEEE Industry
Applications Magazine 2002
[7] K. Pandiaraj, B. Fox, “Novel voltage control for
embedded generators in rural distribution networks,”
Proceedings of the power conference on power system
technology 2000, vol. 1.
[8] M. Suter, “Active filter for a microturbine,” IEEE, 23rd
Telecommunications Energy Conference, INTELEC
2001, pp. 162 – 165.
[9] ABB website, Product technical guide 1ZSE 5492-104.
[10] Arthur R. Bergen, Power system analysis, Published by
Prentice Hall Inc., New Jersey, USA, 1986, pp. 151 –
173.
[11] Manitoba HVDC Research Center, “PSCAD/EMTDC
V2 User’s Manual”, Copyright Manitoba HVDC
Research Center.
[12] P.M. Anderson, Power system protection, published by
McGraw Hill, Inc., New Jersey, USA, pages 60-64,
214.
[13] IEEE Recommended Practice for Utility Interface of
Photovoltaic (PV) Systems, IEEE std. 929-2000,
published by IEEE, 2000.
Mesut E Baran (S’ 87 – M’ 88) is currently as associate
professor at North Carolina State University in Raleigh,
NC. He received his Ph.D. from the University of
California, Berkeley in 1988. His research interest include
distribution and transmission system design.
Ismail M. El-Markabi is a graduate student in Dept. of
ECE, North Carolina State University. Currently he is
studying towards his Ph.D. degree, he received his M.S
from NC state in 2002. He graduated from Cairo
University, Egypt in 1997. His research interest includes
distributed generation, power electronics control and
PSCAD.
VII. APPENDIX A
Simulated System
Feeder: 11 kV, 7 bus feeder.
Load: All bus loads are 0.75 MW@0.9 pf.
Total feeder load is 6 MVA
DG size: 600 kW fuel cell connected at bus 6 and
operating at constant 0.9 pf. (DG is about 10% of feeder load)
Utility bus is represented by a large synchronous generator
Relay current: Without DG Ir = 325 A, with 1 DG Ir = 292 A,
with 2 DG’s Ir = 260 A
For each feeder segment R= 0.48, X= 0.2859. ∆V between bus
1&7=10% (max allowed)
Relay pickup current: The minimum short circuit current for
the system is 2.15 kA, and the maximum load current is 325
A. the relay pickup current is set according to the following
relationship
I
2 I max − load < I pick −up < sc − min
2−3
The pick up current of the over-current relay must be greater
than twice the maximum load current (650 A), and Isc min /3 =
720 A. So we will set the relay Ipick up = 700 A