Simulation Verification of Overcurrent Protection Operation in Power Networks Integrating Renewable Energy Sources in Energy Communities

Abstract

This publication discusses the risks of further use of classical overcurrent protections in modern power systems. The increasing penetration of renewable energy sources has caused a lot of challenges, among other things, the development of energy communities that balance local generation and consumption. Usually the interconnection line between the energy community and power systems are only used to balance the shortage or overflow of energy. As a result, most of the time these connections can be low loaded. Such a state can cause incorrect operation of power system protection approached, because the current level values are smaller than the required activation level for the protections. This article presents the potential incorrect operation of digital power system protection with overcurrent function. The obtained simulation results clearly show that the correctness of protection operation is strongly dependent on the level load of lines and the parameters and structure of the protection decision algorithms. These problems occur during low load line periods because these were not taken into account during the classical digital protection design stage. In the future this can cause problems with the fulfillment of the basic protection requirements of stability, speed, sensitivity. This publication suggests extra problems for power system protection research.