Protection techniques with renewable resources and smart grids-A survey

Interconnection between countries and surrounding countries provides a large power grid. With the improvement of wind power technology, increase of wind power capacity, the impact of wind power on the grid has become an important research topic as well. Large power systems are facing new challenges, such as increasing penetration of renewable energy sources, in particular wind generation, growing demands, limited resources, and competitive electricity markets. Under these conditions, the large power systems have had to confront some major operating problems in voltage regulation, power flow control, protection, and stability. The traditional stand alone (unit) protection schemes are not capable to protect large scale grid system, particularly after large disturbances. As it is known large disturbances might provoke a series of cascading outages, which can lead to the total system blackout and catastrophic consequences to the equipment and society. Current approaches adopted for implementing protection are not significant advancement in such configuration. Advancements in the protection and control have to be brought into the domain of wind farm application to address the specific needs and challenges of this configuration. This paper introduces a complete survey about traditional protection techniques for transmission line connected with renewable resources and the main shortcoming points for such techniques. Also the most recent techniques and new trends of the protection available nowadays for applying and facing such challenges are given. Smart devices deployed on the smart grid and smart based wireless devices can enhance and provide novel ideas for facing such challenges. (c) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.