Fault Characteristics of Distributed Solar Generation

Abstract

Inverter-based distributed energy resources (DERs) are characterized with low fault current and negligible amount of negative and zero sequence currents. Understanding DER's fault characteristics is critical for fault analysis and protective relay setting. Despite the abundant work on DER modeling, few research studies have been done to analyze DER's fault behaviors during actual fault events. This paper explores recorded fault events collected by Dominion Energy. Fault magnitude, angle, and sequence components are analyzed to show that actual DER fault response may differ from previous understandings.