3620
5, OCTOBER 2022
Source-Agnostic Time-Domain Distance Relay
Prabin Adhikari , Student Member, IEEE, Sukumar Brahma , Fellow, IEEE,
and Phani Harsha Gadde , Graduate Student Member, IEEE
Abstract—Fault response of an inverter based resource (IBR) is
dictated by its control scheme, making it markedly different from
the response of a synchronous source. This has led to misopera-
tion of distance relays when fed by IBRs. Published literature is
mostly focused on changing the control design of inverters, but
this approach is not practical, as these controls are proprietary
and beyond the reach of utilities. To resolve this issue, this paper
proposes a method for a source-agnostic distance relay that works
in time-domain. Using only single ended measurements, the relay
detects, classifies and locates any fault on the line it monitors. The
method does not require any polarization technique. It is shown
to work for unbalanced lines of any length, for transmission or
distribution system with any number (even 100%) of IBRs, is
immune to load encroachment, decaying dc offset and prefault
currents. With very limited communication, it is also shown to be
immune to fault resistance.
Index Terms—Distance protection, inverter based resource,
time-domain analysis.
I. INTRODUCTION
ECENT developments in renewable energy (RE) tech-
R nologies have made it possible to obtain several hundred
megawatts of power from a single power plant [1]. This has
spurred connection of large solar PV and wind plants at trans-
mission levels. These plants typically connect through inverters.
Grid codes and standards dictate the behavior of such IBRs
during faults [2], [3], requiring them to ride through faults. More
recent grid codes specify active and reactive power requirements
with reactive power priority from IBRs during faults [4]. Plus,
the component devices of inverters are susceptible to thermal
damage from currents higher than their ratings. Due to these
factors IBRs restrict their fault contributions to purely positive
sequence values comparable to their ratings (1.1 to 1.5 pu), and
Manuscript received 27 May 2021; revised 4 September 2021 and 12 Novem-
ber 2021; accepted 13 November 2021. Date of publication 7 December 2021;
date of current version 23 September 2022. This work was supported in part by
two Awards by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and
Renewable Energy through the Solar Energy Technologies Office Sandia Na-
tional Laboratories. First, through the Sandia National Laboratories under Grant
36533 - Sub-Award to Clemson University, and second, through the University
of North Carolina, in part Charlotte under Award DE-EE0008774, Sub-Award
20190382-01-CLE, and in part by the Sandia National Laboratories which is
a Multimission Laboratory managed and operated by the National Technology
and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of the
Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National
Nuclear Security Administration under Contract DE-NA0003525. Paper no.
TPWRD-00782-2021. (Corresponding author: Prabin Adhikari.)
The authors are with the Holcombe Department of Electrical and Com-
puter Engineering, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634 USA (e-mail:
prabina@clemson.edu; sbrahma@clemson.edu; pgadde@clemson.edu).
Color versions of one or more figures in this article are available at
https://doi.org/10.1109/TPWRD.2021.3133333.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRD.2021.3133333
0885-8977 © 2021 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 37, NO.
control the power factor of the fault current based on the reactive
power priority logic.
Distance element, directional element, and fault-type identi-
fication (FID) are integral parts of a distance relay; failure of any
one of these elements will result in an incorrect operation. Pub-
lished works have shown how the performance of these elements
is adversely affected in the presence of IBR. Hooshyar et al. [5]
and Fang et al. [6] highlight how the unusual fault characteristics
of inverters result in incorrect tripping of distance relays, char-
acterized by missing in-zone faults and tripping for out-of-zone
faults. Haddadi et al. [7] and Hooshyar et al. [8] illustrate
how the curtailment of negative sequence currents by inverter
control schemes causes the misoperations of negative sequence
based protection elements in presence of IBR. These problems
have encouraged several works to address the challenges faced
by distance relays in presence of IBR. However, most papers
propose altering the control characteristics of the inverters to
address the problems and require detailed information on the
inverter control scheme to implement their solution [8]–[12].
Inverters are owned mostly by third parties; their designs are
proprietary, and beyond the reach of utilities, rendering these
remedies impractical, at least for most existing IBRs.
Among the few papers that avoid modifying inverter controls
to solve the problem, a new formulation for impedance calcula-
tion is proposed in [13], but it requires communication between
two ends. With this assumption, the intertripping schemes rou-
tinely used in practice, like overreaching schemes or differential
schemes, can easily be used, and are indeed used to counter this
problem [14]. This renders the method in [13] less attractive.
In [6], a distance protection scheme that is supervised by zero-
sequence overcurrent element for unbalanced ground faults is
proposed. However, in systems with ungrounded transformer
connection on the line-side (not uncommon in systems with
renewables), the zero-sequence overcurrent element will not
pick up for ground faults, and the scheme would not work. This
makes the proposed solution system dependent.
Thus, there is certainly a need for a source-agnostic and
network-independent relay that uses single-ended local mea-
surements. The relay proposed in this paper offers exactly these
features. In addition, it is immune to load encroachment (this
problem has contributed to progression of many blackouts), to
the decaying dc offset that is most often present in fault currents
and to prefault currents. It is inherently directional and hence,
does not require any polarization— a problem that has led to
failure of modern numerical relays employing negative sequence
based polarization in presence of IBRs [15]. The proposed relay
uses sampling of voltages and currents at 1 MHz, a sampling
ADHIKARI et al.: SOURCE-AGNOSTIC TIME-DOMAIN DISTANCE RELAY 3621

Fig. 1. A two bus power system.

rate that is already used in commercially available relays [16].

Digital oscilloscopes [17] support even higher sampling rates. Fig. 2. Model of an unbalanced line.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section II
describes the derivation of the method leading to the formulation
of the relay logic. Test systems used to validate the proposed a high frequency of 1 MHz, which enables the time-derivative
relay logic are discussed in Section III. Results showing the quantities in (2) and (3) to be calculated accurately by using
effectiveness of the method for all the test systems are presented successive samples: if vs(k − 1) and vs(k) be the sampled
in Section IV. Section V shows how the relay can be made values of vs at successive samples k − 1 and k, respectively,
immune to fault resistance with very limited communication, the time derivative of vs at the kth sample is given by,
and Section VI concludes the paper.
dvs vs(k) − vs(k − 1)
(k) = , (4)
II. METHODOLOGY dt Δt
A. Formulation of the Method where Δt is the sampling time step. Calculating di(t)
dt as in (4),
Consider a two-bus power system as shown in Fig. 1, where the only unknown quantities in (3) are vf and x.
time-domain measurements of voltages and currents are avail- Three phase equations can be formulated to write KVL be-
able at the sending end. Throughout the paper ‘sending end’ tween sending end and the fault point by including mutual
refers to the end where measurements are taken and relay is coupling between the phases in (3), irrespective of a balanced or
located. Fault is assumed on the line at a distance x from the unbalanced system. Model of an unbalanced transmission line
sending end. Let r and l be the resistance and inductance of is shown in Fig. 2. Based on this model, the line current ia, for
the line per unit length respectively, and C the total capacitance phase a, is the difference between the measured current isa and
of the line. The line can then be represented by a ‘hybrid Pi’ the current ica through the shunt capacitor, and is expressed as
circuit as shown in Fig. 1, where shunt capacitor is lumped,  
but series parameters are distributed. If vs(t) and is(t) are the 1 dvsa dvsb dvsc
ia = isa − Caa + Cab + Cac (5)
instantaneous voltage and current, respectively, at the sending 2 dt dt dt
end, the instantaneous current through the capacitor, ic(t), is
Similarly, the line currents in the other two phases are,
given by
 
C dvs(t) 1 dvsa dvsb dvsc
ic(t) = , (1) ib = isb − Cab + Cbb + Cbc (6)
2 dt 2 dt dt dt
and the line current, i(t), is then given by  
1 dvsa dvsb dvsc
ic = isc − Cac + Cbc + Ccc (7)
i(t) = is(t) − ic(t) 2 dt dt dt
C dvs(t) The line currents obtained from (5)–(7), for each phase, are
= is(t) − (2)
2 dt then used to write the KVL from the sending end to the fault
Since only instantaneous values are used throughout the point considering the mutual coupling between the phases:
formulation of the method, the notation (t) is dropped for the 
dia dib
derivations described in this paper. vsa = vfa + raa ia + laa + rab ib + lab + rac ic
If vf is the voltage at the fault point at any instant of time, dt dt

then from Kirchhoff’s voltage law (KVL), vs can be written as, dic
+lac x (8)
dt
  
di dib dia
vs = vf + ri + l x. (3) vsb = vfb + rbb ib + lbb + rab ia + lab + rbc ic
dt dt dt

In (3), the line parameters are known, vs is measured, and i dic
+lbc x (9)
is calculated using (2). The measured quantities are sampled at dt

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3622 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 37, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2022


dic dia TABLE I
vsc = vfc + rcc ic + lcc + rac ia + lac + rbc ib RELAY ELEMENTS AND THEIR OPERATION
dt dt

dib
+lbc x. (10)
dt

In (8)–(10), x is the distance to fault; and vfa , vfb , and vfc

are the fault voltages between each phase to ground, which are
not known. The line parameters expressed as self and mutual
resistances and inductances are per unit length. The rest of the
derivation is continued considering phase a to be faulted. For a
fault in phase a, (8) can be written as,

vsa = vfa + Aa x (11)

where,
 
dia dib dic
Aa = raa ia + laa + rab ib + lab + rac ic + lac .
dt dt dt
(12)

The term Aa is nothing but the expression for the voltage drop
in the line section per unit length between sending end and the
fault point. Similar expressions can be written for Ab and Ac
from (9) and (10), respectively. These values of Aa , Ab , and Ac
can be determined from single ended measurements with the
knowledge of the line parameters.
Conventional distance relays that calculate the positive se- Fig. 3. Three bus power system.
quence impedance of the faulted section of the line assume that
the fault resistance, and hence the fault voltage to be negligible
in their formulation. With the same assumption, for a fault
B. Directionality of the Relay
involving phase a and ground, vfa in (11) will be zero. In such
case, the distance to fault can be calculated simply by, If a fault occurs in a line that is behind the relay, it is important
to determine what the relay measures as the distance to the fault.
vsa
x= . (13) In Fig. 3, there is a fault behind the relay ‘R’ that is protecting
Aa the line 2–3 in forward direction. The voltages and currents
If the fault involves two phases, for example, a line-to-line measured by the relay, with CT polarity connected for forward
(LL) fault between phase a and phase b, then synchronous local direction, are vs and is, respectively. Let C and C  be the total
samples from both the phases have to be used for calculation. capacitance of the line 2–3 and line 1–2, respectively, shown split
Obtaining such samples is well within the capabilities of com- at each line-end in Fig. 3. It is obvious that the currents ic and ic
mercial relays [16]. Equation (11) for phase b can be written are negligible compared to the line currents i and i . Neglecting
as these capacitive currents, for a fault in line 1–2 (backward fault
for the relay), we have
vsb = vfb + Ab x. (14)
i = −i. (16)
For zero fault resistance, in case of LL fault, the fault voltages Using KVL from bus 2 to the fault point, vs can be given by,
vfa and vfb are equal. Thus, using (11) and (14), the distance  
di
to fault, x, can be calculated by vs = vf + ri + l x, (17)
dt
vsa − vsb
x= . (15) where x is the distance to fault from the relay. Using (16) in
Aa − Ab
(17), vs is given by
Equation (13) and (15) can be used to create six relay units  
di
to cover all types of fault. Table I summarizes such units and vs = vf + ri + l (−x ) (18)
provides expressions for distance to fault used by each unit. The dt
table links every fault occurring in the line to at least one of the In (3), for a relay set for forward faults, x is the distance to
six relay units; for each fault, all relay elements associated with fault. Comparing (18) with (3), we get,
the fault should operate and yield correct distance to fault using
their respective expressions. x = −x . (19)

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ADHIKARI et al.: SOURCE-AGNOSTIC TIME-DOMAIN DISTANCE RELAY
In (18), x is a positive value, which implies that the distance
calculated by the distance relay, −x , is negative for a reverse
fault. This shows that the relay is able to identify a fault as reverse
if the distance calculated by it for the fault is negative. Even if
there are sources connected to bus 2 in Fig. 3, the current is
will still be measured by the relay as a negative value. In this
case, magnitudes of i and i in (16) will not be equal, but the
polarities will still be opposite. Therefore, the relay will measure
a different distance for a reverse fault, but the distance will always
be negative. The same logic would apply for any fault on an
adjacent line. Thus, the formulation of the method itself makes
the relay inherently directional, completely removing the need
for polarization. This is a major contribution, since the methods
used for polarization using negative sequence quantities have
misoperated in presence of IBRs [15].
C. Fault Detection, Distance Calculation, and Fault Type
Identification Scheme
Equation (11) can be written as
vsa vfa
= + x. (20)
Aa Aa
It is important to note that (13) is derived from (11), assuming
that vfa is zero during fault. When there is no fault, vfa , the
phase a to ground voltage at a distance x from the sending end, is
a non-zero sinusoidally varying quantity. However, during fault,
the quantity vs a
Aa will be theoretically constant, except around
the region when Aa is close to zero. This physical reality is used
to detect and locate fault.
In order to avoid mathematical instability, the distance relay
algorithm tracks two generalized variables vs and A, defined
and calculated from the sending end measurements as
 tower with 6 m of horizontal spacing between the conductors,
vsi , for ground elements
vs = (21)
vsi − vsj , i = j for phase elements
 in the distance measured by a legacy distance relay.
Ai , for ground elements
A= (22)
Ai − Aj , i = j for phase elements
where i, j ∈ {a, b, c}. This definition allows for a single expres-
sion for fault distance, irrespective of a ground or phase element
as,
vs
x= , A = 0. (23)
A
In order to avoid mathematical instability around A = 0, the
algorithm detects zero-crossing of the variable A and uses three
measurements that are at 30◦ , 60◦ and 90◦ after the zero-crossing,
to calculate three values of x, x1 , x2 and x3 , using (23). If all
three values are positive and almost the same, a fault is detected
and located at the same time. In order to implement this concept,
this paper uses the average of the three values of x as a reference
and detects and locates a fault when all three values are within
an acceptable tolerance from the reference. The average value
is then taken as the distance to fault. In unfaulted conditions,
these three values of x will follow (20), and hence vary widely,
following a sine curve. In that case, a fault is not declared, the
next zero-crossing of A is detected, and the process is continued
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3623
Fig. 4. 230 kV transmission system with two synchronous sources.
until a fault is detected. Based on the testing of the method
with different systems at transmission and distribution levels,
as described in Section IV, a tolerance level of 2–4% of the
reference value is found to be appropriate.
This algorithm runs parallelly in all relay elements, so once
the status of fault in all the elements is obtained, with the help
of Table I, fault type identification is performed. For example, if
BG and CG elements operate together with BC element, the fault
will be identified as a BCG fault, whereas, if only BC element
operates, the fault will be identified as a BC fault.
III. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION
In order to display the full capabilities of the proposed method,
three test systems are chosen, as described in the following
subsections.
A. Transmission System With Synchronous Sources
This test system, as shown in Fig. 4, consists of a 230 kV,
60 Hz, 150 km long transmission line. The line is modeled
using the distributed line model with overhead line towers in
PSCAD/EMTDC. The tower configuration is a 3-conductor flat
20 m above the ground. No transposition is assumed, thus
creating an unbalanced line. Unbalance creates an inherent error
Two synchronous sources — G1 and G2— are modeled
as Thevenin equivalents, with source voltage angles (δ) of
(1)
10◦ and 0◦ , respectively. Positive sequence impedance (Zs )
(0)
and zero sequence impedance (Zs ) are 13.77 + j78.1445 Ω
and 4.135 + j23.4522 Ω for G1 and 10.41 + j74.1346 Ω and
3.125 + j22.2414 Ω for G2. A constant-power load of 150 MVA
at 0.9 pf lagging is connected at bus 2. This configuration creates
a prefault current flow of 200 A (equivalent to 80∠5◦ MVA) at
rated voltage from bus 1 to bus 2.
B. Transmission System With IBR and Synchronous Source
In this test system one of the sources is replaced by an IBR as
shown in Fig. 5. The IBR is a 100 MVA, 15 kV grid-following
(GFOL) inverter with controls set to provide full-load power
during steady state operation at rated voltage. The PI control
block described in [18] is modified for voltage ride through char-
acteristics found in the Siemens-Gamesa [19] inverter design for
GFOL inverter that applies reactive current priority during faults,
blocks negative sequence currents, and limits the current to 1.1
pu of the inverter rating. The modified implementation of the
3624
Fig. 5. 230 kV transmission system with grid-following inverter.
Fig. 6. Siemens-Gamesa inverter logic implementation for a grid-following
inverter.
inverter control logic is shown in Fig. 6. The control action is
modified considering two different operating conditions: normal
operating condition with the positive sequence terminal voltage
(Vp ) between 0.9 pu to 1.1 pu, and abnormal operating condition
with Vp less than 0.9 pu.
Under normal operating condition, the reference active power
Pref is equal to Pset , which is the rated normal power output of
the inverter, taken equal to the total power rating of the inverter
in this paper, and the Qref is set to the prefault reactive power
Qpref ault , taken as zero in this paper. Ilimit is the limit on the
inverter current output magnitude which is set to 1.1 pu.
Under abnormal operating conditions, the inverter is required
to supply certain reactive power to meet the grid requirements.
Depending on the magnitude of Vp , the reactive power reference
Qref is calculated as
Qref = Qpref ault + K(1 − Vp ),
where K is a multiplier from 1 to 10, which is taken as 2 in
the model used for this paper. The control logic has a reactive
current priority: Qref is determined first using (24), Iqref is
then calculated from Qref and Vp as shown in Fig. 6. After that,
Pref is determined using

Pref = Ilimit 2 − Qref 2 pu (25)
making sure that the current limit is not exceeded. Once Iqref
and Idref are calculated from Qref and Pref respectively, for
both normal and abnormal operating conditions, these reference
values are sent to the PI controller described in [18] that controls
the inverter output voltage and current.
C. Distribution System
In order to observe the performance of the scheme in highly
unbalanced distribution system with multiple IBRs operating
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 37, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2022
Fig. 7. IEEE 13-bus distribution feeder with inverters.
together, the test bed developed at Clemson [20] using the IEEE
13-bus feeder [21] is implemented in PSCAD/EMTDC. As
shown in Fig. 7, four inverters are connected to buses 650, 633,
675 and 680, rated 1500, 1000, 800, and 800 kVA, respectively.
Inverter at bus 650 is a grid-forming (GFOR) inverter, while the
others are GFOL inverters. Proportional-resonant (PR) control
with current limit (1.2 pu for GFOL inverters and 1.5 pu for the
GFOR inverter) is used for all inverters; the inverter models and
controls are taken from [22].
To test the proposed method, the line between bus 671 and
bus 680 is chosen. This line is a 1000 feet long three phase line
with B-A-C-N phasing. Faults are simulated in the line in both,
grid-connected and islanded modes (rigorous condition, as there
is no strong source during islanded operation) of operation with
measurements taken at bus 680.
IV. RESULTS
The proposed method is tested on the transmission and distri-
bution systems described in Section III. Instantaneous samples
of phase voltages— vsa , vsb , vsc and current measurements—
isa , isb , and isc are obtained at the relay terminal at frequency of
(24) 1 MHz. The method involves calculation of time-derivatives of
these measured quantities using linear approximation. Clearly,
in order to calculate these derivatives in this fashion, pure
fundamental waveforms are needed for voltage and current.
For this reason a lowpass filter is used to get rid of the high-
frequency transients from the measured quantities. The filter is
a third-order lowpass filter with a cutoff frequency of 120 Hz.
The filtered quantities are then used to calculate Aa , Ab , and Ac
using (12) appropriately for each phase. The method described
in Section II-C is implemented for all four types of faults -
three-phase (3-φ), line-to-ground (LG), line-to-line (LL), and
line-to-line-to-ground (LLG) - simulated at different locations
on the line. The accuracy of the distance calculated by the relay
as defined by [23] is given by,
%Error =
Actual distance − Calculated distance
× 100%. (26)
T otal length of the line
ADHIKARI et al.: SOURCE-AGNOSTIC TIME-DOMAIN DISTANCE RELAY
Fig. 8. Instantaneous waveforms during an AG fault in the line, (a) vsa , (b)
isa , and (c) Aa .
A. Method Applied to Transmission System With Synchronous
Sources
A bolted AG fault is simulated at 100 km from the relay at
time t=1.002 s into the simulation. The unfiltered and filtered
instantaneous phase a voltage and current are shown in Fig. 8(a)
and (b). These filtered samples of vsa and isa are used to
calculate Aa , the voltage drop per unit length, plotted in Fig. 8(c).
Notice that the fault instance is chosen to create a large dc offset.
The distance calculated by the AG element of the distance
relay is shown in Fig. 9(a). Notice that it is behaving as described
by (20) before fault, varying continuously and peaking to a very
high value when Aa is near zero. However, it becomes constant
after fault, except when Aa is near zero (samples around Aa ≈ 0
are ignored by the relay), as described by (13). For this case the
distance relay detects the fault, identifies the fault type as AG,
and calculates the fault distance to be 100.2 km in 0.0165 s, or
almost one cycle into the fault.
Although waiting for the measurement to become constant
is a good strategy to detect a fault, the wide variations in the
pre-fault period can be mathematically treated to improve the
fault detection. This will be helpful for faults with resistance,
where the variations do exist during the fault period, although
much slower, as analysed in Section V. Since both vsa and Aa
in (13) are sinusoidal, the variation in distance calculations in
the pre-fault period is periodic, repeating every half cycle when
Aa goes through a zero crossing, with a frequency of 120 Hz.
This varying nature can be removed by applying FFT on the
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3625
Fig. 9. Distance to fault calculated by the AG element of the relay for AG
fault. (a) Actual distance calculation. (b) Magnitude of the 120 Hz component.
TABLE II
SIMULATION RESULTS FOR TRANSMISSION SYSTEM
WITH TWO SYNCHRONOUS SOURCES
waveform of Fig. 9(a) as shown by the magnitude of the 120 Hz
component of this waveform in Fig. 9(b). Clearly, this 120 Hz
component captures the signature of the variation of distance
calculation during the pre-fault and fault period. Therefore, this
nature of the variation of 120 Hz component can be alternatively
used for fault detection using a threshold on the magnitude of
the 120 Hz component.
For other faults simulated at different locations, the results
are summarized in Table II. It is evident that the method per-
forms with high accuracy, unaffected by prefault currents or the
decaying dc offset. Since the method is formulated to capture
the physics of the fault, the decaying dc offset in fault current
is already captured by the formulating equations, thus obviating
the rather difficult process of filtering this offset required for
accuracy of conventional relays.
The method is also tested by replacing the source G1 in the
test system of Fig. 4 by an actual synchronous generator model.
3626
TABLE III
SIMULATION RESULTS WITH A SYNCHRONOUS GENERATOR BEHIND RELAY
Fig. 10. Inverter performance for. (a) LG fault. (b) LLG fault.
The generator model used is a 120 MVA salient-pole generator
with exciters and governor models incorporated into it. The
performance of the method with an actual SG feeding the relay
is depicted in Table III. From the table, it can be seen that even
with the detailed model of SG, the accuracy of the proposed
method is unaffected. This fact further adds to the argument that
the proposed method is source agnostic.
In addition, the proposed method has also been tested ex-
tensively and successfully on the augmented system along the
lines shown in Fig. 3 for its performance under reverse faults
and faults on an adjacent line, with and without the presence of
multiple sources connected to the bus behind the relay.
B. Method Applied to Transmission System With IBR
The performance of the proposed method is tested in presence
of IBR with the test system described in section III-B. Perfor-
mance of the inverter for LG and LLG faults is shown Fig. 10,
which shows the currents, positive sequence voltage and power
output at the inverter terminal. It can be seen that the the current
limit, suppression of the negative sequence current and reactive
power priority are being correctly implemented as designed.
Results are summarized in Table IV. Very small errors in the
calculation of the distance to fault suggest that the proposed
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 37, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2022
TABLE IV
SIMULATION RESULTS FOR TRANSMISSION SYSTEM
WITH GRID-FOLLOWING INVERTER
Fig. 11. Performance of the proposed method with varying sampling fre-
quency.
method is not affected by the fault response of the inverter and
requires no modifications to be used with IBRs, making the
method source-agnostic and control independent.
C. Sensitivity of the Method to Sampling Frequency and Line
Parameters
Although a sampling frequency of 1 MHz is well within
the scope of the existing relays, it is important to assess the
performance of the method at lower sampling frequencies as
well. In the test system of Fig. 4, faults are simulated at a distance
of 100 km from the sending end and the errors in distance
calculated by the relay R, for different faults under varying
sampling frequencies, are shown in Fig. 11. Results clearly
show robust performance of the relay even at lower sampling
frequency. As long as the time-derivative of the voltage and cur-
rent measurements are accurate using the linear approximation,
a lower sampling frequency has no impact on the performance
of the relay.
Furthermore, the method is robust to errors in the estimation
of transmission line parameters. Typically the error in estimation
of resistance is significantly larger than that of inductance [24].
Taking typical range of errors in transmission line parameter
estimation shown in [24] and [25], line resistance and inductance
per km (both self and mutual) are varied up to 20% and 5% of
the original values, respectively. For an AG fault simulated at
100 km from the sending end, the maximum error in distance
ADHIKARI et al.: SOURCE-AGNOSTIC TIME-DOMAIN DISTANCE RELAY
TABLE V
SIMULATION RESULTS FOR IEEE 13-BUS FEEDER
calculated by the proposed relay is less than 3% for variation in
line resistance and less than 3.5% for variation is line inductance.
D. Method Applied to Distribution System
The proposed method is also tested on the IEEE 13-bus test
feeder described in section III-C. Simulation results are shown
in Table V. The maximum error is around 1.8% of the total
line length, even for this highly unbalanced very short feeder,
irrespective of the system being in grid-connected or islanded
mode, which demonstrates the generality of the formulation that
powers this method, and underscores the claim of being source-
agnostic and network-independent.
E. Directional Property of the Distance Relay
Directional property of the proposed relay is tested against the
67Q negative sequence based directional element in presence of
IBR. The 67Q directional element identifies a fault as forward if
the negative sequence voltage V (2) measured by the relay lags
the negative sequence current I (2) by an angle between 0 to
180◦ (assuming a characteristic angle of 90◦ , a common setting
in existing numerical relays). Otherwise, the fault is identified as
reverse [26]. The proposed method, on the other hand, identifies
a fault as forward if the calculated distance is positive. Both
relays are tested, placed in front of a synchronous source and a
IBR in the test system, for different unbalanced faults simulated
at a distance of 60 km in the forward direction. Summary of
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3627
TABLE VI
COMPARISON OF DIRECTIONAL PROPERTY OF PROPOSED METHOD WITH 67Q
DIRECTIONAL ELEMENT
the simulation results is shown shown in Table VI. With IBR
behind the relay, the 67Q directional element fails to operate
with its typical pickup settings— 0.2 pu for forward faults and
0.15 pu for reverse faults [7], as I (2) is almost completely cut-off
by the IBR. Thus, to see how the relay behaves if it were to
operate, the pickup settings are reduced to 0.02 pu. With the
new settings the relay operated, but identified all forward faults
as reverse (R). This is because the working principle of 67Q
is developed assuming the angular relationship between V (2)
and I (2) in a highly inductive negative sequence circuit of a
synchronous source. With IBR, the power factor control changes
the angle between V (2) and I (2) , as seen in Table VI, causing
the misoperation of 67Q element. However, the proposed relay
calculates correct positive distance to fault for every fault, even
with an IBR behind it. As 67Q is negative sequence based, it
does not work for balanced faults, thus only unbalanced faults
are shown for comparison. The proposed relay, on the other
hand, works for all types of fault.
Furthermore, the performance of both the relays is tested in
presence of an IBR with controls designed to inject negative
sequence current during fault according to the German Grid
Code [4]. With the new angles between V (2) and I (2) imposed
by the code, it is found that the 67Q element operates correctly
for faults that caused misoperations before. Since formulation
of the proposed relay does not have any assumption regarding
the source or any control implemented in the source, it is not
impacted by the new IBR controls; this further adds to the paper’s
claim that the proposed method is source-agnostic.
V. MAKING THE RELAY IMMUNE TO FAULT RESISTANCE
The distance to fault calculated by the AG element of relay R
in the test system of Fig. 4, for an AG fault with 10 Ω fault resis-
tance in the line at 100 km from the relay is shown in Fig. 12(a),
where the fault is initiated at t=1 s into the simulation. For
resistive faults, there is variation in the calculation of distance
after fault, but the variation is much slower and smaller than
the variation before fault. This variation is clearly captured by
the magnitude of the 120 Hz component of the waveform of
Fig. 12(a) as shown in Fig. 12(b). The magnitude drops sharply
from 1200 km to around 70 km (not correct distance, obviously)
after fault. Similar signature was seen for all types of faults at
different locations in the line with varying fault resistance. This
sharp fall in magnitude is used to detect fault.
3628
Fig. 12. Distance to fault calculated by the AG element of the relay for a
resistive AG fault. (a) Actual distance calculation. (b) Magnitude of the 120 Hz
component.
Revisiting (11), it is clear that with only one set of syn-
chronized voltage and current samples communicated from the
opposite end during the fault period, the variable vf can be
removed, as shown in (27)
vfa = vs1a − A1a x = vs2a − A2a (L − x)
vs1a − vs2a + A2a L
⇒x= , (27)
A1a + A2a
where, superscript 1 denotes measurements at the sending end,
and 2 denotes the measurements at the opposite end. Therefore,
as soon as fault is detected, a single set of synchronized mea-
surements from the opposite end is requested for accurate fault
location. Notice that continuous communication of voltage and
current signals is not required. Hence, communication band-
width is not a problem. Such communication is well within the
purview of existing communication channels that are reliably
used by legacy schemes. This was implemented for all the test
systems described in Section III and the test cases described in
IV. Fault resistance was chosen to be 5 Ω and 10 Ω for phase
faults, and 10 Ω and 20 Ω for ground faults. The maximum errors
in fault location was observed to be 0.3% for the transmission
system with synchronous sources, 0.35% for the transmission
system with IBR and 0.1% for the distribution system.
VI. CONCLUSION
This paper proposes a time-domain distance relay formulated
with a sampling rate of 1 MHz, using generalized differential
equations that capture the actual physics of a fault on an un-
balanced line, regardless of the source feeding the line. Due to
such formulation, the relay is shown to become source-agnostic,
giving excellent results for any length and unbalance in line, is
immune to the decaying dc offset, load encroachment, prefault
current, and does not need any polarization for detecting the
correct direction. The theory and claims are rigorously tested
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 37, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2022
using PSCAD/EMTDC-simulations of unbalanced transmission
and distribution lines, with and without IBRs modeled to repli-
cate the behavior of commercial inverters during fault. It is also
shown that with very limited communication that is routinely
used in power system protection, the relay becomes practically
immune to fault resistance.
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3629
Prabin Adhikari (Member, IEEE) received the Bachelor of Engineering degree
from the Institute of Engineering, Tribhuvan University, Kirtipur, Nepal, in
2017. He is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering
from Clemson University, Clemson, SC, USA. His research interests include
protection of inverter dominated power grids, power system monitoring and
control, and adaptive relaying.
Sukumar Brahma (Fellow, IEEE) received the B.E. degree from Gujarat
University in 1989, the M.Tech. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology
Bombay, Mumbai, India in 1997, and the Ph.D. degree from Clemson University,
Clemson, SC, USA, in 2003, all in electrical engineering. He is currently
a Dominion Energy Distinguished Professor of power engineering and the
Director of Clemson University Electric Power Research Association, Clemson
University, Clemson, SC, USA. He is the Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS
ON POWER DELIVERY and was the Guest Editor-in-Chief of the Special Issue
on Frontiers of Power System Protection for the journal. His research focuses
on different aspects of power system modeling, analysis, and protection. Dr.
Brahma is the IEEE Distinguished Lecturer.
Phani Harsha Gadde (Graduate Member, IEEE) received the B.Tech. degree
from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad, India, in 2013, and
the M.S. degree in electrical engineering from New Mexico State University, Las
Cruces, NM, USA, in 2015. He is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in
electrical engineering with emphasis in power systems with Clemson University,
Clemson, SC, USA. From 2016 to 2018, he was a Power Systems Engineer with
ABB Enterprise Software Inc.