Pilot Protection Based on Backward Traveling-Wave Voltage Difference for Submarine Cables of Low-Frequency Transmission System with Integrated Offshore Wind Power

Abstract

Multiterminal low-frequency transmission system (LFTS) has promising potential for large-scale offshore wind power integration. Nevertheless, the existing protection suffers from low sensitivity, and even operates incorrectly because the converters connected to both ends of cables change fault characteristics substantially. To address this problem, this paper firstly inspects the adaptability of current differential protection, revealing the manner in which control strategies after fault impact the sensitivity of the existing protection. Then, based on the characteristics of armored three-core cable, phase-mode transformation is utilized to decouple the fault information and the specific moduli are selected to reflect all kinds of fault types. The expression of backward traveling-wave (BTW) voltage based on interpolation is derived under the condition of low sampling frequency. Finally, a pilot protection based on BTW voltage difference for submarine cables of LFTS with integrated offshore wind power is proposed, which has higher sensitivity because the difference between BTW calculated from local information and the one from remote information is considerable during fault transient period. Simulation tests compare the performance of the existing protection with that of the proposed protection. Extensive simulations corroborate that the proposed protection reliably identifies the fault cable in various fault scenarios.