An Enhanced Current Difference Based Fault Detection Technique for Low-Voltage DC Microgrid

The Renewable Energy Sources and distributed generation (DG) in low voltage DC (LVDC) microgrids require fast and reliable fault detection. This paper proposes a fault detection technique based on the cumulative sum of difference of change in current Difference (CDCID) for the LVDC microgrids. The CDCID parameter observes the successive current differences between buses and identifies the fault with excellent response time. AC Grid, Solar PV and battery storage are integrated into this system and operates in DC Grid-Connected (GC) and Islanded modes, which is modelled on MATLAB/Simulink platform. The performance of the proposed method is tested for Pole-to-Pole (PP) and Pole-toGround (PG) faults for varying fault resistances under various operating conditions and it successfully differentiates internal faults from external disturbances. The test results illustrate that the proposed scheme can detect faults with high accuracy and faster response time making it a potential candidate for providing dependable protection measures for LVDC microgrids.