Fuse saving coordination scheme for active distribution systems: State‐of‐the‐art and a novel quasi‐voltage current based scheme

Abstract

Abstract Increasing the penetration level of distributed generation (DG) units requires overcoming the technical challenges associated with their integration into the distribution systems, especially protection problems. Change in the current profile of the distribution system due to the presence of DG units disrupts the operation of the conventional fuse saving coordination (FSC) scheme. The first objective of this paper is to provide an overview of the state‐of‐the‐art of FSC schemes in distribution systems with distributed generators that has not been systematically presented yet. In addition to comparing the features of reliability, cost, speed, implementation, calculation burden, and requirements, the impact of presence of distributed generations on the performance of the conventional FSC scheme is investigated in details. The second objective of this paper is to propose an FSC restoration scheme for minimizing the challenges of previous works. Using a quasi‐voltage current term, the proposed scheme modifies the adjustable time coefficient of the recloser in two ways of pro and plus. The former scheme provides an approximate FSC with a simple setting while the latter scheme provides complete coordination at the expense of a more complex setting. No need for voltage measurement makes its implementation practical in available distribution systems. The effective performance of the proposed FSC scheme is verified through extensive simulation studies in the ETAP environment.

Keywords

• distributed power generation
• distribution networks
• electric fuses
• overcurrent protection
• power distribution protection