Protection Miscoordination Index in Distribution System Protection with Distributed Generation Considering Fault Current Limiters

This paper presents an index to evaluate miscoordination between protective devices in distribution systems with distributed generation and fault current limiters. Indices for evaluating the coordination or miscoordination of protection systems due to distributed generation contribution have already been proposed, however, none considered recloser - fuse coordination and fault current limiters. These devices are responsible for reducing fault current due to distributed generation and minimize harmful effects that can occur on protective devices coordination. In this paper, fault current limiters are considered on the elaboration of a distribution protection miscoordination index to evaluate distributed generation penetration in electric distribution systems. This index considers distributed generation penetration and its effect on recloser - fuse miscoordination. The problem was modeled as a mixed integer nonlinear programming problem, and particle swarm optimization was used to determine the Distribution Protection Miscoordination Index. The proposed method was tested on IEEE 37 nodes system, simulated on OpenDSS.