DISTRIBUTED GENERATION PROTECTION SCHEME TO PERMIT 'RIDE-THROUGH FAULT'

Abstract

The growing concern about global climate change has led the European Union and the Portuguese Government to set targets for the percentage of electricity to be produced from renewable sources. In order to achieve the defined targets, Distributed Generation (DG) is expected to be increasingly integrated into networks. However, the intermittency of some of those DGs (such as wind energy) may enhance network operating costs or decrease network security. Thus, Network Operators started to concern about these effects and in order to avoid them, new wind parks were required to provide ancillary services to the network. These ancillary services include the ride-through-fault capability. Although some wind parks can already supply ride-through-fault capability to the distribution network (i.e. wind parks with Double Fed Induction Generators (DFIG)), most of them are still largely unable to do so due to the current DG protection scheme. This work concentrates on the development of new settings for the DG protection scheme which aims at allowing DG to provide ride-through fault capability to the distribution network. A DFIG with ride-through-fault capability was modeled on PSCAD/EMTDC and tested under the Portuguese Distributed Generation Protection Scheme Regulation Code. New relay settings for the DG protection scheme are advanced and simulated on PSCAD/EMTDC software in order to permit DGs providing ride-through fault capability to the distribution network. Conclusions of the new re