Energy Engineering and Management

Energy Engineering and Management

Evaluation of the Impact of Coordinating Voltage Protection of Distributed Generation Resources with Network Current Protection on Reliability Index

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
zeinab piran 1
abbas saberi noghabi 2
Saeed Reza Goldani 2
1 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Birjand, Birjand.
2 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Birjand, Birjand, Iran
10.22052/eem.2026.258767.1174
Abstract
With the expansion of the penetration of distributed generation sources in distribution networks, their voltage protection has become one of the fundamental challenges in improving the reliability and performance of overcurrent relays. When a fault occurs, if the voltage protection of distributed generation sources operates before the overcurrent relays operate, these sources are disconnected from the network and reliability indexes, including ENS, increase. Therefore, the time interval between the operation of the distributed generation voltage protection system and the network current protection is of particular importance. Also, failure to observe the time interval between the operation of the main and backup network protections can cause incoordination and unnecessary outages. Therefore, the three reliability index, coordination of voltage protection with current protection and coordination of the main and backup network current protections, should be examined simultaneously. In this paper, a new index based on the combination of these three factors is proposed to evaluate the effect of voltage protection on current protection. In order to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed index, this index has been examined on a sample test system. Simulation results show that the proposed method is able to effectively evaluate the impact of distributed generation voltage protection on relay performance, protection coordination, and reliability.
Keywords
Overcurrent Relay
Distributed Generation (DG)
Reliability Index
Protection voltage
Protective coordination constraints
Subjects