Analysis of the Impact of the Crowbar Protection on Short-Circuit Level and Quality Index

Abstract

The accelerted growth of power generation from renewable sources have taken great importance for planning and operation of distribution network due to the power supplied to the system from these sources. The development of technologies that allow exploiting the renewable resources has led to increase of distributed generation (DG) mainly at the distribution level. The integration of these DGs provides advantages to the power system as diversification of energy market and reduction of CO2 emissions. Nevertheless, disadvantages are also present like variations of short-circuit current levels, which affects the protections coordination by causing undesirable interruptions of the power supply to users that should not be affected. This paper analyses the impact on protection system and quality service index in a radial distribution network caused by the variation of short-circuit current level after the integration of a Doubly Fed Induction Generator (DFIG) under consideration of crowbar protection (disconnect/reconnect). As study case, an IEEE 13 node test system was used to simulate a balanced short-circuit and to evaluate the impacts on protection system and quality service index.