Increased Distributed Generation (DG) presence on radial distribution feeders is
becoming a common trend. The existing Overcurrent Protection (OCP) scheme on such feeders
consists mainly of overcurrent protection devices (OCPDs) such as fuses and reclosers. When
DG is placed on the remote end of a 3-phase lateral, the radial configuration of the feeder is lost.
As a result, OCP issues may arise which lead to permanent outages even when the fault is
temporary. This thesis presents a new approach that revises the existing OCP scheme of a radial
feeder to address the presence of DG. The fuses on the laterals with DGs are removed and multifunction
recloser/relays (MFRs) are added to address three specific OCP issues; fuse fatigue,
nuisance fuse blowing, and fuse misoperation.
The new approach requires no communication medium, provides backup protection for
the DG unit, and allows the remaining laterals to retain their existing protective devices. The
results are reported using the IEEE 34 node radial test feeder to validate the new approach and
the IEEE 123 node radial test feeder to generalize the approach. The new approach completely
mitigated the fuse misoperation and nuisance fuse blowing issues and most of the fuse fatigue
issues that were present on the radial test feeders. Specifically, the approach demonstrates that
coordination between the existing protection devices on radial distribution feeders is maintained
in the presence of DG.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2008-12-167 |
| Date | 14 January 2010 |
| Creators | Funmilayo, Hamed |
| Contributors | Butler-Purry, Karen |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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