A Fast Fault Detection Scheme for Low Voltage DC Microgrid

This paper proposes a variational mode decomposition (VMD) based fast and reliable protection scheme for low voltage direct current (LVDC) microgrid. The current signal from one end of the line is extracted and processed through the signal processing tool VMD, which decomposes it into several modes. The most significant mode containing the maximum information is being selected and the energy of that mode is computed. The change in the energy of the selected mode is utilized as a fault detection index. The presented scheme is examined for its ability to detect pole to pole (PP) and pole to ground (PG) fault in grid-connected (GC) and standalone mode of operation with different fault resistance and fault locations. The ability of the proposed technique to distinguish fault cases from critical no-fault cases is also examined. The validation is carried out in a LVDC microgrid modelled in MATLAB/SIMULINK platform. The test outcomes clearly show the potential capacity of the proposed scheme for fault detection in LVDC microgrids.