Skip to main content
OSTI.GOVU.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information
 

Grid Forming Inverter With Increased Short-Circuit Contribution to Address Inverter-Based Microgrid Protection Challenges

Journal Article · · IEEE Open Journal of the Industrial Electronics Society
 [1];  [2];  [1]
  1. Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
  2. Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

Substantial differences in fault levels between grid-tied and islanded modes is one of the primary challenges of microgrid protection. During grid-tied mode, the bulk grid provides significant short-circuit, while during islanded operation the short-circuit magnitude is small due to inverter-based resources limiting their current output close to nominal ratings. Consequently, conventional distribution protection strategies based on overcurrent cannot reliably protect microgrids when operating in islanded mode. Fuses and circuit breakers are particularly affected because of their inverse characteristics. Presently, the absence of affordable solutions for protecting microgrids in islanded mode leads to microgrids shutting down during electrical faults. The contribution of this article is two-fold. The first innovation proposes specific hardware modifications to grid-forming inverters to increase their short-circuit current during electrical faults. The second innovation introduces a novel control strategy designed to preserve control stability margins even when the grid-filter saturates, ensuring sinusoidal output currents under normal and fault conditions. Through experimental results, the inverter with the proposed modifications can provide more than three-times its nominal current during electrical faults. For the prototype testbed, this was sufficient to enable the use of traditional legacy overcurrent protection, achieving the fuse-to-relay and relay-to-relay minimum coordination time for the line-to-ground, line-to-line to ground, and three-phase electrical faults.

Research Organization:
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Electricity (OE)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-00OR22725
OSTI ID:
2426065
Journal Information:
IEEE Open Journal of the Industrial Electronics Society, Journal Name: IEEE Open Journal of the Industrial Electronics Society Vol. 5; ISSN 2644-1284
Publisher:
IEEECopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (33)

Protection schemes used in North American microgrids journal May 2020
Comparison of high‐speed adaptive and nonadaptive backup overcurrent protection on fuse feeders with sensors
  • Piesciorovsky, Emilio Carlos; Ferrari Maglia, Maximiliano F.
  • International Transactions on Electrical Energy Systems, Vol. 29, Issue 4 https://doi.org/10.1002/etep.2812
journal December 2018
Abuse behavior of high-power, lithium-ion cells journal January 2003
Comparison of Programmable Logic and Setting Group Methods for adaptive overcurrent protection in microgrids journal October 2017
A critical review of Microgrid adaptive protection techniques with distributed generation journal December 2021
Microgrid protection: A comprehensive review journal October 2021
Protective relay traveling wave fault location conference January 2012
A Fuzzy Rule Base Approach for Intelligent Protection of Microgrids journal August 2015
Cost benefit analysis of faster transmission system protection systems: Presented at the 71st annual conference for protective relay engineers conference March 2018
Experimental Evaluation of Grid-Forming Inverters Under Unbalanced and Fault Conditions
  • Gurule, Nicholas S.; Hernandez-Alvidrez, Javier; Darbali-Zamora, Rachid
  • IECON 2020 - 46th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, IECON 2020 The 46th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society https://doi.org/10.1109/IECON43393.2020.9254562
conference October 2020
An Admittance-Based Protection Scheme for Microgrids conference November 2023
Deep Learning for Hardware-Based Real-Time Fault Detection and Localization of All Electric Ship MVDC Power System journal January 2020
A voltage based protection for micro-grids containing power electronic converters conference January 2006
Inverter Design with High Short-Circuit Fault Current Contribution to Enable Legacy Overcurrent Protection for Islanded Microgrids conference July 2022
PV-Inverter Dynamic Model Validation and Comparison Under Fault Scenarios Using a Power Hardware-in-the-Loop Testbed
  • Hernandez-Alvidrez, Javier; Summers, Adam; Pragallapati, Nataraj
  • 2018 IEEE 7th World Conference on Photovoltaic Energy Conversion (WCPEC) (A Joint Conference of 45th IEEE PVSC, 28th PVSEC & 34th EU PVSEC) https://doi.org/10.1109/PVSC.2018.8547488
conference June 2018
Performance and Techno-Economic Evaluation of a Three-Phase, 50-kW SiC-Based PV Inverter conference June 2019
Grid-forming Inverter Experimental Testing of Fault Current Contributions conference June 2019
Operating MicroGrid Energy Storage Control during Network Faults conference April 2007
Virtual Impedance Current Limiting for Inverters in Microgrids With Synchronous Generators journal March 2015
Rainflow Algorithm-Based Lifetime Estimation of Power Semiconductors in Utility Applications journal July 2015
Inductor Saturation Compensation in Three-Phase Three-Wire Voltage-Source Converters Via Inverse System Dynamics journal May 2022
A Novel Protection Scheme for Inverter- Interfaced Microgrid (IIM) Operated in Islanded Mode journal January 2017
CERTS Microgrid Demonstration With Large-Scale Energy Storage and Renewable Generation journal March 2014
Traveling Wave-Based Protection Scheme for Inverter-Dominated Microgrid Using Mathematical Morphology journal September 2014
Microgrid Protection Challenges and Mitigation Approaches–A Comprehensive Review journal January 2022
Maximizing line protection reliability, speed, and sensitivity conference April 2016
IEEE Standard for Interconnection and Interoperability of Distributed Energy Resources with Associated Electric Power Systems Interfaces--Amendment 1: To Provide More Flexibility for Adoption of Abnormal Operating Performance Category III standard April 2020
2800-2022 - IEEE Standard for Interconnection and Interoperability of Inverter-Based Resources (IBRs) Interconnecting with Associated Transmission Electric Power Systems standard April 2022
Grid-Tied PV Inverter with Oversized Power Module to Increase its Low-Voltage Ride Through (LVRT) Capabilities and VAR Support conference November 2023
Microgrid Protection journal July 2017
Modeling a Grid-Forming Inverter Dynamics Under Ground Fault Scenarios Using Experimental Data From Commercially Available Equipment conference June 2021
Artificial Intelligence-Based Protection for Smart Grids journal July 2022
n Tuning PI Controllers for Integrating Plus Time Delay Systems journal January 2010

Figures / Tables (31)

FIGURE 1(p. 2)figure FIGURE 1
TABLE 1(p. 4)table TABLE 1
TABLE 2(p. 4)table TABLE 2
TABLE 3(p. 5)table TABLE 3
TABLE 4(p. 5)table TABLE 4
FIGURE 2(p. 6)figure FIGURE 2
FIGURE 3(p. 7)figure FIGURE 3
FIGURE 4(p. 7)figure FIGURE 4
TABLE 5(p. 7)table TABLE 5
FIGURE 5(p. 8)figure FIGURE 5
FIGURE 6(p. 8)figure FIGURE 6
FIGURE 7(p. 8)figure FIGURE 7
FIGURE 8(p. 9)figure FIGURE 8
FIGURE 9(p. 9)figure FIGURE 9
FIGURE 10(p. 10)figure FIGURE 10
FIGURE 11(p. 10)figure FIGURE 11
FIGURE 12(p. 11)figure FIGURE 12
FIGURE 13(p. 11)figure FIGURE 13
FIGURE 14(p. 11)figure FIGURE 14
FIGURE 15(p. 12)figure FIGURE 15
FIGURE 16(p. 13)figure FIGURE 16
FIGURE 17(p. 14)figure FIGURE 17
FIGURE 18(p. 14)figure FIGURE 18
FIGURE 19(p. 15)figure FIGURE 19
FIGURE 20(p. 16)figure FIGURE 20
FIGURE 21(p. 16)figure FIGURE 21
TABLE 6(p. 16)table TABLE 6
FIGURE 22(p. 17)figure FIGURE 22
FIGURE 23(p. 17)figure FIGURE 23
FIGURE 24(p. 18)figure FIGURE 24
TABLE 7(p. 18)table TABLE 7

Similar Records

Inverter Design with High Short-Circuit Fault Current Contribution to Enable Legacy Overcurrent Protection for Islanded Microgrids
Conference · Fri Jul 01 00:00:00 EDT 2022 · OSTI ID:1885345
Real-Time Model-Adaptive Relaying Applied to Microgrid Protection
Conference · Wed Mar 22 00:00:00 EDT 2023 · OSTI ID:1989106
Real-Time Model-Adaptive Relaying Applied to Microgrid Protection
Conference · Sat Dec 31 23:00:00 EST 2022 · OSTI ID:1994721

Related Subjects

42 ENGINEERING
adaptive protection
distribution protection
grid-forming inverters (GFMI)
microgrid protection
overcurrent protection
saturable inductors