Novel Fault Protection Method for Flexible DC Power Systems

Abstract

A fault protection method is proposed for flexible direct-current (DC) power systems based on the cosine similarity of currents in current-limiting reactors. The typical characteristics of external and internal faults in a flexible DC power system were analyzed. The principles of cosine similarity and the fault current characteristics of current-limiting reactors were used to distinguish between internal and external faults. The ratio of the average positive and negative voltages of the current-limiting reactor was then used to distinguish the fault types and fault line. Finally, a simulation model of a circular flexible DC power system was constructed using MATLAB/Simulink software (2018b). The simulation results show that the proposed protection scheme can quickly and accurately identify the location and type of faults, and has a strong ability to withstand fault resistance and is less affected by distributed capacitance, noise, and communication delay.

Keywords

• flexible DC power systems
• current-limiting reactor
• cosine similarity
• external fault
• internal fault