Automatic overcurrent protection coordination after distribution network reconfiguration based on peer-to-peer communication

Abstract

Electrical power systems represent a fundamental part of society, and their efficient operations are of vital importance for social and economic development. Power systems have been designed to withstand interruptions under already provided safety and quality principles; however, there are some extreme and not so frequent events that could represent inconveniences for the correct operation of the entire system. For this reason, in recent years the term resilience, which serves to describe the capacity of a system to recover from an unwanted event, has been analyzed on planning, operation and remedial actions. This work is focused on the implementation of a topological reconfiguration tool, which is oriented to change the structure of primary feeders based on changing the status of switchgears. Once the distribution network has been reconfigured, an algorithm of protection coordination is executed based on communication peer-to-peer between Matlab and PowerFactory, which develops an adaptive calculation to determine the current setting and the time multiplier setting. The reconfiguration and coordination protection algorithms could be implemented and evaluated on different distribution networks, areas and locations.