Studies on Grid Impacts of Distributed Generation in a Combined Real-Time Simulation Environment

The increasing amount of distributed generation in public networks sets new requirements for the traditional network protection schemes. Actual problems have been experienced relating for instance to fault levels, reclosings and earth faults. As the complex protection is often considered a barrier against more wide-scale use of distributed energy resources, new development is needed. New generation units are often equipped with power electronic converters, whose behavior during faults and disturbances requires accurate modeling. This paper focuses on protection impacts of distributed generation and on the possibility of applying a novel simulation environment for these studies. The environment is described and some motivation for building such system is discussed. An example case is studied using the simulation environment. Some observations are made based on the results.