Designing a new smart IED for detecting and clearing faults in solar networks

Abstract

In recent decades, use of solar systems is developed and it is used in many small applications even in home appliances. DC micro grids with centralized solar generation are widely interested for various power applications due to their advantages over traditional AC power distribution systems with respect to power density and power distribution efficiency. On the other hand, protection of these kind of systems against faults are hard to diagnose. It is difficult to extinguish these arc faults via conventional circuit breakers due to the lack of natural zero-crossing of DC current. To overcome of this problem, this article proposed a new smart relay for detecting and clearing faults in solar networks that can gather data of all elements in grid and transmit data to a central control system in a SCADA system by using IEC61850 standards.