Impact of Solar and wind Energies on Distance Protection of Transmission Lines

Distance relay is the main type of relays used for transmission lines protection, as it can detects the faults from long distance and it is fast response compared to other relays, also protection zones can be applied to distance relay in order to provide backup protection for other transmission line relays. The operation of distance relay depends on measuring the line impedance and compare it to trip condition. However, the operation of distance relay can affected by some conditions and one of these conditions is renewable energies. Renewable energies sometimes affect relay operation depending on penetration level as it causes wrong detection of fault location seen by the relay. In order to avoid that problem relay setting needs to be changed. The model of system will be simulated by using Matlab/Simulink. Where single line-to-ground and line-to-line faults will be applied in the transmission lines to verify distance relay performance in presence of renewable energies. Zones of protection by distance relays will be studied in order to detect the impact of renewable energy on fault location seen by the relay.