Fault detection and isolation in a DC microgrid using a central processing unit

The goal of this paper is to design a protection system capable of detecting, isolating and locating high and low impedance ground faults in a DC multi-terminal system using a Digital Signal Processing (DSP) based control unit. Due to low current fluctuations during faults, it becomes difficult to detect high impedance faults using conventional methods. In order to locate faults, the DC ring bus will be divided into different zones and an algorithm will be developed to monitor currents in each zone. The proposed method has been tested through examples and is seen to be cost effective and easy to implement.