AC microgrid protection - A review: Current and future prospective

Microgrid is an important component of the evolving smart-grid. It has the ability to increase reliability, decrease costs, and enlarge penetration rates for distribution generation systems. However, the protection coordination may get badly affected due to the bi-directional/variable power flow associated with microgrid system and increasing penetration rates of distributed energy resources. Therefore, a proper protection strategy is highly required to decrease the complexities associated with microgrid system. In this paper, a widespread literature review on the current research and progression in the field of AC-microgrid protection is presented. The prime objective of this survey is to extend the researcher's database comprising relevant reference points which could be highly beneficial to their future research work. This work comprises of the current status, major hitches and existing research efforts focussed in the direction of providing a smooth relaying system under diverse MG operating conditions. Moreover, the work concentrates on analysing the intelligent approaches/devices that help transform the present protection schemes to become smarter.