Smart meter-based outage detection and fault location in a microgrid in Gaidouromantra, Greece

In the existing literature, Digital relay-based protection schemes are proposed for microgrids (MGs). Digital relays are expensive and uneconomical for practical microgrids. However, in most MGs, smart meters (SMs) with communication facilities are available at the consumer end for energy measurements. These SMs can measure the electrical quantities and communicate the measurements to the local server. This paper demonstrates that SMs can also be used for outage detection and fault location in practical MGs. Gaidouromantra MG is one such MG in Kythnos island, Greece, with SMs and communication facilities. This paper proposes two algorithms to detect outages and fault locations. The first algorithm is a voltage-based algorithm which assumes that SM communication is intact. The second algorithm extends the first. It uses current measurements along with voltage measurements to tackle the problem of SM communication disconnection after the fault. The algorithms use measurements from the SMs to detect the outage in the feeder and locate the fault with the guidance of the MG's topology. Additionally, the extended algorithm can be used to indicate SM communication failure and no-load/disconnection status of houses on the island, if any occur. The algorithms are validated using the Gaidouromantra MG model on Simulink and hardware-in-loop simulations of the Gaidouromantra MG. The proposed algorithms can generally be applied to MGs with radial structures consisting of a single grid-forming inverter and multiple grid-following inverters, as in Gaidouromantra.