A Dynamic Load-Shedding Technology Based on IEC 61850 in Microgrid

Load-shedding is an effective control strategy to balance power generation and load demand, which is essential to maintain power system stability. Based on IEC 61850 protocols, this article integrates a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) platform and intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) to propose a new dynamic load-shedding (DLS) control strategy applied in a microgrid (MG) system. Once the power imbalances occur, the proposed DLS strategy calculates the appropriate amount of load shedding and determines the importance of each bus to prioritize loads. To evaluate the feasibility and applicability of the proposed DLS strategy, this work applies to a specific MG, which is located in Penghu, Taiwan, and compares the existing conventional under-frequency relay protections. Validation is performed by the Power System Simulator for Engineering (PSS/E) software simulations in three realistic scenarios. The use of artificial neural networks (ANNs) and metaheuristic algorithms to forecast power imbalances has been widely investigated recently. Readers require a strong background in mathematics to realize the principles. In contrast, the proposed protection strategy is easy to understand and implement without complicated algorithms but rather logical concepts. This is one of the significant contributions of the work.