Fault diagnosis in distribution networks with distributed generation

The penetration of distributed generation (DG) in distribution power system would affect the traditional fault current level and characteristics. Consequently, the traditional protection arrangements developed in distribution utilities are difficult in coordination. Also, the reclosing scheme would be affected. With the rapid developments in distribution system automation and communication technology, the protection coordination and reclosing scheme based on information exchange for distribution power system can be realized flexibly. This paper proposes a multi-agent based scheme for fault diagnosis in power distribution networks with distributed generators. The relay agents are located such that the distribution network is divided into several sections. The relay agents measure the bus currents at which they are located such that it can detect and classify the fault, and determine the fault location. The proposed technique uses the entropy of wavelet coefficients of the measured bus currents. The performance of the proposed protection scheme is tested through simulation of two systems. The first system is a benchmark medium voltage (MV) distribution system and the second system is practical 66 kV system of the city of Alexandria. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.