Grid Forming Inverter With Increased Short-Circuit Contribution to Address Inverter-Based Microgrid Protection Challenges

• Published in: IEEE open journal of the Industrial Electronics Society Vol. 5; pp. 481 - 500
• Main Authors: Ferrari, Maximiliano, Tolbert, Leon M., Piesciorovsky, Emilio C.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01-01-2024; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: adaptive protection; Circuit breakers; Circuit faults; Control stability; Distributed generation; distribution protection; Electric fuses; Electrical faults; ENGINEERING; Faults; Fuses; grid-forming inverters (GFMI); Industrial electronics; Innovations; Inverters; Microgrid protection; Microgrids; Overcurrent; overcurrent protection; Protection; Relay; Reliability; saturable inductors; Short circuit currents
• ISSN: 2644-1284; 2644-1284
• DOI: 10.1109/OJIES.2024.3406915

Substantial differences in fault levels between grid-tied and islanded modes is one of the primary challenges of microgrid protection. During grid-tied mode, the bulk grid provides significant short-circuit, while during islanded operation the short-circuit magnitude is small due to inverter-based resources limiting their current output close to nominal ratings. Consequently, conventional distribution protection strategies based on overcurrent cannot reliably protect microgrids when operating in islanded mode. Fuses and circuit breakers are particularly affected because of their inverse characteristics. Presently, the absence of affordable solutions for protecting microgrids in islanded mode leads to microgrids shutting down during electrical faults. The contribution of this article is two-fold. The first innovation proposes specific hardware modifications to grid-forming inverters to increase their short-circuit current during electrical faults. The second innovation introduces a novel control strategy designed to preserve control stability margins even when the grid-filter saturates, ensuring sinusoidal output currents under normal and fault conditions. Through experimental results, the inverter with the proposed modifications can provide more than three-times its nominal current during electrical faults. For the prototype testbed, this was sufficient to enable the use of traditional legacy overcurrent protection, achieving the fuse-to-relay and relay-to-relay minimum coordination time for the line-to-ground, line-to-line to ground, and three-phase electrical faults.