A real-time UWT-based intelligent fault detection method for PV-based microgrids

• Published in: Electric power systems research 2019-12, Vol.177, p.105984, Article 105984
• Main Authors: Yılmaz, Alper, Bayrak, Gökay
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Accuracy; Automatic fault detection; Data acquisition; Distributed generation; Electric power grids; Electricity distribution; Fault detection; Filtering systems; Microgrid; Noise reduction; Real time; Un-decimated wavelet transform; Voltage; Voltage sags; Wavelet transforms
• ISSN: 0378-7796; 1873-2046
• DOI: 10.1016/j.epsr.2019.105984

[Display omitted] •An intelligent method using undecimated wavelet transform (UWT) is proposed for fault detection.•A UWT-based FDM is proposed in real-time to overcome the limitations of WT-based methods.•For the first time, a UWT-based fault detection method is designed in real-time.•A real-time smart fault detection system is developed for a PV-based microgrid.•A reliable and intelligent fault detection solution in microgrid protection. In this paper, a new un-decimated wavelet transform (UWT)-based fault detection method is proposed to overcome the limitations of WT-based methods in real-time applications. For the first time, UWT method is used to detect power quality disturbances (PQD) in microgrids in real time. UWT reduces the oscillations and noise in the signal and also is useful for selecting threshold values. This method is implemented by using only the voltage signal to detect the PQDs automatically for a PV-based microgrid. The voltage sag/swell, and interruption faults are evaluated in the experimental study by considering the duration and event amplitude of the PQD signal. High accuracy is also provided for detecting PQDs without using any noise filtering process. The results indicate that the proposed technique has a wide application area, fast fault detection time, and it is reliable for microgrids.