A review of faults and fault diagnosis in micro-grids electrical energy infrastructure

With the advancements of sensing, communication, and control technologies, the existing power systems have evolved with the development of Smart Micro-grids. Smart micro-grids integrate information technology, communication technology and power generation systems into one unified micro power system for robust and reliable power. Current and future microgrids are expected to have significant clean energy penetration with rising environmental concerns. A critical problem in power systems is the cascading effect of faults leading to severe failures and blackouts unless timely protective actions are taken. As a recovery mechanism, smart micro-grids are envisioned to detect these critical changes and switch into island mode for continual power generation and system stability. However, their electrical energy infrastructure is also prone to faults and instabilities emphasizing the need to develop real-time algorithms for self diagnosis that can capture failure characteristics in the early phase of their evolution using data collected from monitoring units. This paper provides a comprehensive review that focuses on faults and fault diagnosis methods in smart micro-grids with clean and conventional generation systems as well as their interconnections.