Localisation and Identification of Faults in DC Microgrid-Low Voltage DC Lines
Harshit Sharma1, K. Vaibhav Patil2, Sridhar. R3, Pradeep Vishnuram4

1Harshit Sharma, Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, SRM IST, Chennai (Tamil Nadu), India.
2K. Vaibhav Patil, Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, SRM IST, Chennai (Tamil Nadu), India.
3Dr. Sridhar R., Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, SRM IST, Chennai (Tamil Nadu), India.
4Pradeep Vishnuram, Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, SRM IST, Chennai (Tamil Nadu), India.
Manuscript received on 02 April 2019 | Revised Manuscript received on 18 April 2019 | Manuscript Published on 30 April 2019 | PP: 47-56 | Volume-7 Issue-6S6 April 2019 | Retrieval Number: F10100476S619/2019©BEIESP | DOI: 10.35940/ijrte.F1010.0476S619
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© The Authors. Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering and Sciences Publication (BEIESP). This is an open access article under the CC-BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

Abstract: The deployment of DC sources like photovoltaic (PV) systems and fuel cell (FC) stacks have increased substantially as there prevails a paradigm shift in electrical power delivery to the loads. The power generated by the array is either transmitted at long distances or connected to a micro-grid. Such a system is prone to short circuit faults, resulting in power outages and circuitry damages. In this paper, a power electronic circuit, buck boost converter, facilitates identification of DC line faults and locating it appropriately. Numerous techniques have been proposed for fault identification in AC grid lines. But in DC lines, very few have administered the fault identification in DC grid, which is again complex and costly. This work applies a simple and effective resistance calculation methodology which is executed by a Arduino based control circuitry. The suggested scheme works appropriately for faults like Line- Line (L-L) fault i.e. short-circuited cables, Line-Earth (L-E) fault i.e. broken cable. The MATLAB/Simulink results and the real time hard ware results reveal that the suggested technique is highly viable.
Keywords: Buck boost Converter, Line-Earth Fault, Line- Line Fault, Microgrid, Microprocessor, Photovoltaic.
Scope of the Article: Low-power design