Impact of PV Farms with Smart Inverters on the Protection of Distribution System

Integrating Distributed Energy Resources (DER) into the power grid has been accelerating, bringing many challenges in power system protection. The impact becomes more complex with the introduction of smart inverters. This paper demonstrates the adoption of phasor-based distribution system analysis tool to assess the impact of such DERs on the protection of a distribution system. The paper shows that a software platform such as OpenDSS can be used for this type of analysis, provided that the tool has appropriate models for smart inverters. The simulations on a sample feeder demonstrate such capability. These simulations also show that the response of the protection system to PV integration, including miscoordination and sympathetic tripping, can be investigated with the help of these tools.