Protection of Power Systems with High Penetration of Renewable Energy Generation

全球应对迅速发展的气候变化的主要措施是，可再生能源，特别是风能和太阳能发电的使用出现前所未有的增长。风能和太阳能发电都通过具有先进控制和故障穿越能力的电力电子转换器与公用电网互连。在电网故障期间，这些转换器将故障电流几乎限制在额定值以保护半导体器件，这给依赖于升高的电流进行故障检测的网络保护器件带来了许多挑战。 在配电一级，小规模可再生能源发电的互联将网络转变为积极的配电系统。有限的故障电流贡献阻碍了在配电层使用的传统过电流保护的故障检测和鉴别能力。保护误动作、意外产生通电的孤立网络区段或孤岛以及这些孤岛的不同步重连是其他一些问题。具有高渗透率的私有小型发电机的有源配电网络的拓扑结构的不确定性是针对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。 大规模的风能和太阳能发电场在传输层面相互连接。风能和太阳能发电的有限故障电流贡献通常需要使用更昂贵的通信辅助线路保护方案。尽管如此，备用保护可能会失败，因为来自太阳能/风力发电厂的故障电流不会持续足够长的时间。转换器接口源对在许多功能中使用负序量的现代保护继电器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协调软件不能准确地捕捉转换器接口发电机的故障电流行为。 在这项研究计划中，我的目标是探索保护解决方案，促进可再生能源资源进入电网的高渗透率。我将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，利用深度学习和大数据分析的最新进展。用于评估潜在解决方案的真实的实时实施和硬件在环测试将是研究的一个组成部分。我还将探讨开发用于保护协调的混合相量和时域分析工具。研究成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。参与该研究计划的HQP将获得电力系统仿真，算法开发和继电器测试方面的专业知识，这些都是行业高度追求的技能。

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.