Field analysis of directionality measurement with inverter based resources in India

Abstract

Renewable energy sources are getting integrated into the electrical power network since many years. The characteristics of these sources are completely different from traditional synchronous generators. This is posing challenges for power engineers from system protection and control perspective. Cases of maloperations of protective relays have been a focus of research across industries and universities. India has been growing in deploying distributed energy resources. Most of the maloperations reported relate to transmission line protection. Studies on maloperation of directional element are not duly addressed from Indian grid perspective. Few cases from India have been chosen for research. Fault data from Type-4 and Type-3 wind plant and solar park has been analysed and compared with literature reports. The objective of this paper is to document the behaviour of directional elements for a distributed energy resource connected system in India. In addition, aim is to understand the gaps from existing research to the behaviours of the current directional protections. This would help in identifying mechanisms to ascertain directionality for similar systems in the future. The conclusion from the paper is that the detection of fault direction must be completed before the time inverter control kicks in to operation in any algorithm. © 2025 The Author(s). IET Generation, Transmission & Distribution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The Institution of Engineering and Technology.