MACHINE LEARNING FOR PROTECTION OF

DISTRIBUTION NETWORKS AND POWER

ELECTRONICS-INTERFACED SYSTEMS:
A SURVEY PAPER

BY
IMDAD ULLAH
Registration No: 17244
MS COMPUTER SCIENCE
INTRODUCTION
With the spotlight on industrial electronics solutions and
seamless communication capabilities, the landscape of power
system measurement particularly in the distribution level is
evolving to benefit from the abundance of smart meters,
intelligent electronic devices (IEDs), phasor measurement units
(PMUs), and various sorts of emerging sensors mainly enabled
by the internet of things (IoT) technology.

This Paper first focuses on the opportunities of

• ML techniques in modern DNs.
• ML applications associated with MGs
• Power electronics-interfaced systems
ML approaches bring forth opportunities for developing adaptive
and reinforcing solutions for power systems problems.
Just to name a few, ML techniques were successfully used to
predict
• Load curves
• Wind power outputs
• Schedule energy management implementations
• Make decisions in electricity markets
• Run contingency analysis and develop adaptive emergency
control schemes to solve system uncertainties and variations
Distribution networks (DNs)
The main challenge toward achieving the situational awareness
is the lack of high-resolution measurements in DNs, which has
recently been resolved by the advent of distribution-level phasor
measurement units (PMUs), commonly referred to as D-PMUs.
An important step in leveraging high-resolution measurements
for situational awareness is to recognize valuable portions out of
the extremely large datasets from raw time-series streams.
In the context of data analysis in DNs, the valuable portions of
data mostly refer to the events. Here, the events are defined
rather broadly to include power quality disturbances as well as
reliability events, e.g., fault occurrence.
Microgrids (MGs) and power
electronics-based systems
Microgrids
A microgrid is a decentralized group of electricity sources and
loads that normally operates, connected to and synchronous
with the traditional wide area synchronous grid, but is able to
disconnect from the interconnected grid and to function
autonomously in "island mode" as technical or economic
conditions dictate
The power electronics interface
System
The power electronics interface accepts power from the
distributed energy source and converts it to power at the
required voltage and frequency.
DE systems that generate AC output, often with variable
frequencies, such as wind, micro turbine, IC engine or flywheel
storage need AC–DC converters.
Microgrids (MGs) and power electronics-based
systems Cont…
In MGs, bidirectional power flows imposed by distributed energy
resources (DERs) along with continual short-circuit level
variation caused by different operating modes, i.e. grid-
connected or islanded, make it neither secure nor dependable
to use conventional protection schemes.
The security issue will be worsen by the increase of DERs and
MGs which continue to evolve in modern power systems.
• Lack of sensitivity and selectivity
• Sensitivity notion refers to the feature of protection system in
which the relay can precisely recognize intensity of the fault.
Cont….
• Sympathetic tripping
• As one of the substantial considerations in power system
protection, the effect of fault should be localized through de-
energizing the minimum division of the system.
• Islanding
• Islanding is a phenomenon where one or more DGs remain in
energizing condition and a small portion of the DN is
disconnected from the upstream grid.
• The islanding concept is mainly classified into two types
including:
• i) intentional
• ii) unintentional.
ML applications in MGs dynamic
security assurance
• In practice, dynamic security refers to the ability of power system to
maintain synchronism being subjected to severe transient
disturbances. While losing synchronism, that is so-called out-of-step
(OOS) condition, high mechanical torques might be imposed to the
shaft of generators and extreme currents might flow in stator, rotor,
and damping windings which might result in drastic damages to the
generators.
• The main reasons for dynamic insecurity in low-inertia MGs are:
• 1) Absorbing excessive energy by DERs at during fault stage which is
due to the lack of proper OOS protection measure in MGs.
• This issue is referred to as “OOS protection issue”.
• 2) Intensifying DERs energy level at post-fault stage which is due to
lack of proper reclosing measure in MGs.
• This issue is referred to as “reclosing issue”.
ML application in DC systems
• Protection of DC systems is even more complicated due to
additional specific challenges including the complexity of
grounding system
• The severe disturbances, say short-circuit faults, result in large
deviations in MGs state variables such as DERs speed, voltage
magnitudes and angles, and branches power flows.
• The main reason is disturbing the balance between the input
mechanical power and the electrical output.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Farrokh Aminifar et al. described that the massive deployment
of smart meters, proliferation of advanced measuring devices
such as phasor measurement units, emerging electric and not-
electric sensors, and IoT-enabled data gathering platforms
continually expand the databases. This paper also discussed the
applications of ML techniques in protection and dynamic
security assurance of active distribution network, microgrids,
and power electronics-based systems.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
• To achieve the situational awareness, is the lack of high-
resolution measurements in DNs.
• To recognize valuable portions out of the extremely large
datasets from raw time-series streams.
• Labeling measurement samples in event detection
(Supervised/Semi)
• To distinguish wide window sizes statistically in power quality
events (Unsupervised).
• In MGs, bidirectional power flows imposed by distributed
energy resources (DERs) along with continual short-circuit
level variation caused by different operating modes, i.e. grid-
connected or islanded, make it neither secure nor dependable
to use conventional protection schemes
Methodology
• Different techniques have been introduced in the literature to detect events in
distribution grids. The proposed techniques in prior studies can be categorized
into two broad categories
• Statistical methods
• ML methods
• Model-based methods
• Model-free techniques.
• Statistical event detection methods
• The early studies on event detection in power DNs focused on utilizing
mathematical statistic methods. In a statistical event detection method is
developed based on the theory of quickest change detection to detect
reliability events, i.e., line outages, using PMU measurements.
• ML event detection methods
• The proliferation in deploying high resolution measurements in distribution-
level has introduced extremely large sources of raw data in DN studies. This
calls for developing ML techniques to assure detecting events.
Effect of moving window and
dynamic window size on event
detection:

(a) Static window size without

moving window: one event is
detected.

(b) Static window size with moving

window: another event is detected

(c) Dynamic window size with

moving window: all three events
are detected.
• Supervised/Semi-Supervised learning methods
• The supervised learning methods require a labeled training dataset
that contains both normal operating measurements as well as event
samples to construct a predictive model for event detection. Also, in
semi-supervised learning techniques, the training dataset contains
partially labeled samples. Figure shows the general framework of
supervised learning event detection.
• Unsupervised learning methods
• The unsupervised event detection methods do not require labeled
dataset, i.e. training dataset. The unsupervised methods rely on two
basic assumptions. First, it is assumed that most of the measurement
samples correspond to normal operating of distribution grid and only
a small portion of samples are events, where it is supposed that only
1% of the D-PMU measurements demonstrated any considerable
event. Second, it is assumed that the event samples are statistically
different from normal operating samples.
Conclusions and future study
• This paper provided general overview on the wide range of de
facto and potential applications of ML techniques in protection
and dynamic security assurance of distribution-level systems.
• In this regard, DNs, MGs, and power electronics-based systems
were exclusively focused, their pertinent challenges were
thoroughly acquired, and how ML can address these challenges
was unreservedly discoursed.
• There are two major challenges toward application of ML
techniques in event detection.
• First, due to limited information on the distribution-level event,
labeling measurement samples is still a challenging task.
• Second, some of the power quality events in wide window sizes
are not statistically distinguishable from normal operating
measurement samples.
Bibliography
• Saeed Teimourzadeh, Alireza Shahsavari,Mehdi
Savaghebi,Mohammad Sadegh Golsorkhi Farrokh Aminifar,
"Machine learning for protection of distribution networks and
power electronics-interfaced systems," The Electricity Journal,
vol. 34, 2021.
THANK YOU