Design and Testing of Three Earthing Systems for Micro-Grid Protection during the Islanding Mode

Abstract

This paper presents and tests three earthing systems (TT, TN and IT) for Micro-Grid (MG) protection against various fault types when the MG transferred to the islanding mode. The main contribution of this work is including the models of all micro sources which interfaced to the MG by power electronic inverters. Inverters in turns are provided with current limiters and this also included with the inverter models to exactly simulate the real situation in the MG during fault times. Results proved that the most suitable earthing system for MG protection during the islanding mode is the TN earthing system. That system leads to a suitable amount of fault current sufficient to activate over current pro-tection relays. With using TN earthing system, touch voltages at the faulted bus and all other consumer’s buses are less than the safety limited values during islanding mode. For the two others earthing systems (TT and IT), fault currents are small and nearly equal to the over load currents which make over current protection relay can not differentiate between fault currents and overload currents. All models of micro sources, earthing systems, inverters and control schemes are built using Matlab?/Simulink? environment.