A hardware-in-the-loop testbed for microgrid protection considering non-standard curves

This paper presents a hardware-in-the-loop testbed for microgrid protection, primarily intended for real-time testing of non-standard protection curves. Since these curves differ from those available in commercial relays, it is imperative to test their performance in a hardware environment. The protection curves and digital relay logic were embedded in four Texas Instruments C2000 Delfino F28379D Microcontroller unit (MCU) Launchpad tools, representing four relays within the microgrid. The real-time digital simulator (RTDS) was used to inject the analog signals into the MCUs. Fault conditions were used to compare the performance of the standard curves and non-standard ones. The obtained results showed that hardware implementation was successful due to their proximity to the simulation results. Real-time experiments reinforced the feasibility of the non-standard curves for protecting microgrids.