Plug-and-play protection: a solution against protection scheme design complexity in modern active distribution systems

To deal with protection scheme design complexity in modern active distribution systems, a plug-and-play protection scheme is proposed. This protection scheme does not require any relay settings, traditionally resulting from a protection design study, and is, as far as possible, independent of a particular distribution system. The present paper provides a high-level description of the plug-and-play protection concept and applies it to a real medium-voltage distribution system with distributed generation. The plug-and-play protection scheme proves effective under different fault/system scenarios, serving as a promising solution against the increased protection scheme design requirements of modern active distribution systems.