A Novel Method for Real Time Protection of DC Microgrid Using Cumulative Summation and Wavelet Transform

DC microgrid is a compact framework comprising interconnected nearby sources and loads. The renewable energy source used in DC microgrids being intermittent leads to the change in the power availability as well as the fault current levels. In such situations, detecting and clearing the faults is very important to protect the DC microgrid without compromising on fault clearing time and interruption of the load. This paper proposes a hybrid Cumulative Sum (CumSum) and Wavelet transform-based approach to detect the fault. The CumSum value raises the amplitude by averaging the fault current. Wavelet transforms obtain important fault current features by decomposing the current signal. The hybrid method of CumSum and Wavelet analysis proposed here enables the detection of the fault and differentiates the fault condition from sudden load variation. Additionally, it helps to recognize the location of the fault by the wavelet energy difference. The proposed scheme is tested with a developed ring-type low voltage DC (LVDC) microgrid hardware model under various fault conditions. The scheme is implemented using TMS320F28069 digital signal processors (DSP) of Texas Instruments. The hardware results are validated using MATLAB simulation. The proposed method performance is also compared with the existing methods used for DC microgrid protection. The outcome shows that the proposed method has a high accuracy of 98.72%, selectivity of 96.08%, and reliability of 99.01%. The execution time required by the proposed method is also less.