Wide-area protection in smart grids

In this paper wide-area protection is discussed in smart microgrids. Smart grids inherently propose opportunities to enhance the protection of the lines due to the communication capabilities that present. Smart distribution microgrids would have a communication infrastructure that promotes the performance of their protection decisions. The paper considers a sample microgrid with the required communication links with a logic-based protection scheme that is based on local measurements and status of the adjacent Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs). It is proposed instead of giving the authority of tripping the circuit breakers to different individual relays in a microgrid, the protection could be performed semi-centrally by collecting the situational data in a wider area, then identifying the fault location by the wide-area collected data and finally the trip decision is performed intelligently.