Protection of Power Systems with High Penetration of Renewable Energy Generation

全球对迅速展开的气候变化的反应被可再生能源，特别是风能和太阳能用于发电的空前增长所主导。风能和太阳能发电都通过具有先进控制和故障转移能力的电力电子转换器与公用电网互联。在电网故障时，这些变流器将故障电流限制在几乎额定值，以保护半导体设备，这给依靠升高电流进行故障检测的网络保护设备带来了许多挑战。在配电网层面，小规模可再生能源的互联将电网转变为有源配电系统。传统配电网过电流保护的故障电流贡献有限，影响了其故障检测和识别能力。保护误操作、无意中产生带电的隔离网段或孤岛、以及这些孤岛的不同步重新连接是一些其他问题。随着私人拥有的小型发电机的高渗透率，有源配电网的拓扑结构的不确定性是为有源配电系统提出的各种自适应保护解决方案的关键挑战。*大型风电场和太阳能发电场在传输层互联。风能和太阳能发电对故障电流的贡献有限，通常需要使用更昂贵的通信辅助线路保护方案。尽管如此，后备保护可能会失效，因为太阳能/风能发电厂的故障电流不能持续足够长的时间。变流器接口源对许多功能使用负序量的现代继电保护的影响是一个值得关注的问题。保护工程师使用的传统保护整定计算软件不能准确地捕捉变流接线发电的故障电流行为。*在本研究计划中，我的目标是探索保护解决方案，以促进可再生能源在电网中的高渗透率。我将利用深度学习和大数据分析方面的最新进展，特别研究使用时域保护技术和广域相量测量来实施自适应保护策略。评估潜在解决方案的实时实施和硬件在环测试将是研究的组成部分。我还将探索开发用于保护协调的混合相量和时间域分析工具。研究结果将使继电器制造商和公用事业公司能够开发具有成本效益的电网保护解决方案。参与研究计划的HQP将获得电力系统仿真、算法开发和继电保护测试方面的专业知识，这些技能是业界高度关注的技能。

The global response to rapidly unfolding climate change is dominated by an unprecedented growth in the use of renewable energy, especially wind and solar energy, for electricity generation. Both wind and solar generation is interconnected to utility grids through power electronics converters with advanced control and fault ride through capabilities. During grid faults, these converters limit fault currents almost to the rated value to protect semiconductor devices, causing many challenges for network protection devices that rely on elevated currents for fault detection.*******At the distribution level, interconnection of small-scale renewable generation transforms networks into active distribution systems. Limited fault current contribution hinder the fault detection and discriminating capabilities of traditional overcurrent protection used at the distribution level. False operation of protection, creation of unintentionally energized isolated network sections or islands, and unsynchronized reconnection of these islands are some other issues. Uncertainty in the topology of active distribution networks with high penetration of private owned small-scale generators is a crucial challenge for various adaptive protection solutions proposed for active distribution systems.*******Large-scale wind and solar farms are interconnected at the transmission level. Limited fault current contributions from wind and solar generation often necessitate the use of more expensive communication assisted line protection schemes. Still, backup protection may fail since the fault currents from solar/wind plants are not sustained over long enough period. The impact of converter interfaced sources on modern protective relays that use negative sequence quantities in many functions is a concern. Traditional protection coordination software used by protection engineers cannot accurately capture the fault current behaviour of converter interfaced generation.*******In this research program, I aim to explore protection solutions that facilitate high penetration of renewable energy resources into power networks. I will particularly investigate the use of time domain protection techniques and wide area phasor measurements for implementing adaptive protection strategies, capitalizing on the recent advances in deep learning and big data analytics. Real time implementation and hardware-in-loop testing for evaluating the potential solutions will be an integral part of the research. I will also explore the development of hybrid phasor and time domain analysis tools for protection coordination. The outcomes of the research will enable relay manufacturers and utilities to develop cost effective grid protection solutions. The HQPs participating in the research program will gain expertise in power system simulation, algorithm development, and relay testing, which are highly sought skills by the industry.*********