DCVD-VMD Enabled Traveling Wave-Based Fault Location in Nonhomogenous AC Microgrids

Distributed generation (DG) penetration leads to bi-directional power flow which raised tangible challenges in front of power system protection engineers to maintain the sustainability of power system specially during fault conditions. This article proposes a new approach to identify the fault location in a multiterminal nonhomogenous ac microgrid. Implemented method utilizes the information of traveling waves (TW) with the help of intelligent electronic devices connected at the end terminals of the test system. Proposed approach is independent of the propagation velocity of TW for the estimation of fault. Algorithm identifies the fault section using an approach that utilizes the difference of change in voltage difference (prefault and during fault) at different buses. Then, variational mode decomposition signal processing technique is applied to TW waves captured at the fault section terminals, to estimate the fault location. This scheme is implemented on IEEE 33 bus system, modeled in electromagnetic transients including dc/power systems computer aided design (EMTDC/PSCAD), to validate the methodology. Impacts of variations in fault resistance, input noise level, and inception angle has been considered for the validation of proposed scheme. The outcome of test results indicates that the proposed method gives better performance compared to the conventional TW-based techniques.