Fault Location in Power Distribution System With Penetration of Distributed Generation

It has been shown that coordination between protective devices in distribution systems in the presence of significant distributed generation (DG) will be disrupted. With the recent trend of adopting and integrating renewable resources and microgrids with distribution systems, it is probable that distribution systems will have significant and arbitrary penetration of DG in the near future. This will change the distribution systems to multisource unbalanced systems where protective devices may not coordinate. The fault location in this type of system will be a challenge. This paper describes a general method to locate faults in this type of system. The method uses synchronized voltage and current measurements at the interconnection of DG units and is able to adapt to changes in the topology of the system. The method has been extensively tested on a 60-bus distribution system for all types of faults with various fault resistances on all sections of the system, with very encouraging results.