Real-Time Simulation of Power System Wide Area Protection

The power system is transforming from the traditional grid to a smart grid and it is important that all the aspects of the power system are developed to meet the demand of the smart grid. Wide area protection is a protection technique that uses system wide information obtained from Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) to detect a fault to mitigate cascading failures. Different algorithms have been developed making use of wide area measurement to provide protection to the power system. This study investigated the performance of a wide area protection technique which detects faults by forming protection zones based on the PMU placement and the network topology. The technique makes use of Positive Sequence Voltage Magnitude (PSVM) to detect a zone where a fault occurred and uses the phase angles of the Positive Sequence Currents (PSC) to detect the faulted line. The algorithm was simulated in MATLAB/Simulink and in Real-Time using OPAL-RT, the accuracy of the algorithm was found to be 100% in determining the faulted zone and 85% in determining the faulted line. The fault clearing time was analyzed through hardware-in-the-Ioop (HIL) implementation as against the local protection and the technique was found to be suitable for a backup protection.