Fault Location Algorithm for Multi-Terminal Radial Medium Voltage DC Microgrid

Abstract

Accurately locating the fault helps in the rapid restoration of the isolated line back into the system. This article proposes a novel communication-based multi-terminal method to locate the fault in a radial medium voltage DC (MVDC) microgrid. A time-domain based algorithm is proposed which applies to an MVDC system with different possible combinations of lines and cables. Terminal measurements of voltages and currents, voltages across current limiting reactor (CLR), and node currents are used to propose a flexible online fault location method. Based on the availability of communication and sensors, different terminals can be used to increase the reliability of the proposed fault location method. This method is robust to variations of key implementation parameters like type of faults, fault resistance, fault location, sampling frequency, white Gaussian noise (WGN) in measurement, and different line/cable combinations. Further, the fault location calculation is analyzed with parameter variation. PSCAD/EMTDC based electromagnetic transient simulations are used to validate the performance of the algorithm.