Challenges in High Impedance Fault Detection Due to Increasing Penetration of Photovoltaics in Radial Distribution Feeder

Secure and reliable detection and identification of High Impedance faults (HIFs) on a passive unidirectional radial feeder distribution network is a challenging issue. The integration of inverter interfaced active generation such as photovoltaic (PV) systems into the radial distribution feeder introduces new dynamics which make the detection and identification of the High Impedance faults even more challenging. A new algorithm based on Mathematical Morphology (MM) that analyses the transients generated by HIF arc to detect and uniquely identify HIFs is presented. Simulations results are presented to demonstrate the feature characteristic of the algorithm.