Impacts of distributed generation on travelling wave-based fault locators in medium voltage radial feeders: an analysis for different hosting capacity scenarios

The growing penetration of renewable energy in distribution networks has led utilities to make their systems more flexible and able to operate in a decentralised way. As this penetration becomes more prevalent, it is necessary to readapt fault location algorithms due to a potential paradigm shift. In this study, an analysis was made of travelling wave-based fault locators applied to medium voltage radial feeders with the presence of photovoltaic panels. The proposed approach incorporates the Wavelet transform and empirical mode decomposition to improve the precision rate of a fault locator. In addition, the behaviour of single-ended and double-ended travelling wave algorithms was verified. The simulations were executed using the PSCADTM/EMTPTMsoftware, where a CIGRE 14-buses medium voltage test distribution system was considered. The results showed promising precision (ranging from 0.02% to 1.8%), demonstrating that the proposed approach is not only a technological possibility, but also an accurate fault locator to ensure system’s reliability and efficiency under different hosting capacity scenarios.