Summary

The fast growth of inverter-based resources (IBRs) leads to inverter-dominated power systems, which has significant impact on power system protection. The hardware limitations of IBRs lead to significantly smaller currents during fault events compared to synchronous generators in traditional power systems. This characteristic also applies to grid-forming (GFM) IBRs which are required in inverter-dominated systems. Today, there is only limited knowledge and experience on protecting an IBR-dominated transmission system. This includes the required

Fault-Ride Through (FRT) functions for GFM IBRs as well as how traditional protection functions respond to these FRT functions. In this paper, we summarize an extensive protection scheme analysis of inverter-dominated transmission systems. The analysis consists of a comparison of four commonly used generic FRT functions for GFM IBRs and three different protection functions (line distance, Permissive Over-reaching Transfer Trip (POTT), and line differential) in a variety of test environments. First, we study these functions extensively in a small power system model based on almost 1,000 electro-magnetic transient (EMT) simulations. Second, we implemented and compared these functions in a protection hardwarein-the-loop (PHIL) testbed consisting of a real-time simulation of the transmission system of

Hawai’i Island interconnected with commercial protection relays. The comparison is based on 100 scenarios studied in the PHIL testbed. The main results show that distance protection,

POTT, and differential show high protection dependability & security in IBR-dominated systems and good system stability after fault clearance as well as during non-fault events with appropriate FRT functions.

Additional informations

Publication type Session Materials
Reference B5_10864_2026
Publication year
Publisher CIGRE
Country United States of America
Study committees
File size 888 KB
Price for non member 30 €
Price for member 30 €

Authors

MUENZ Ulrich - Siemens, United States of America; BHELA Siddharth - Siemens, United States of America; BANERJEE Abhishek - Siemens, United States of America; ELPELT Swen - Siemens, United States of America; STINSKIY Alexandr - Siemens, United States of America; DAS Shuvangkar - EPRI, United States of America; HADDADI Aboutaleb - EPRI, United States of America; FARANTATOS Evangelos - EPRI, United States of America; KELLY Daniel - Sandia National Laboratories, United States of America; RENO Matthew - Sandia National Laboratories, United States of America; DONG Zerui - OPAL-RT Corp., United States of America; ASHOK Aditya - OPAL-RT Corp., United States of America

Keywords

Inverter - Grid-Forming - Transmission System - Protection - Fault Ride-Through - Hardware-in-the-Loop

Protection of Inverter-Dominated Transmission Systems: First Experiences from Hawaii Island