Impact of Inverter Based Resources on System Protection

Abstract

Inverter-based resources (IBRs) exhibit different short-circuit characteristics compared to traditional synchronous generators (SGs). Hence, increased uptake of IBRs in the power system is expected to impact the performance of traditional protective relay schemes—set under the assumption of a SG-dominated power system. Protection engineers need to study these challenges and develop remedial solutions ensuring the effectiveness of system protection under higher levels of IBRs. To address this need, this paper studies the impact of IBRs on a variety of protective relay schemes including line distance protection, memory-polarized zero sequence directional protective relay element, negative sequence quantities-based protection, line current differential protection, phase comparison protection, rate-of-change-of-frequency, and power swing detection. For each protection function, potential misoperation scenarios are identified, and recommendations are provided to address the misoperation issue. The objective is to provide an improved understanding of the way IBRs may negatively impact the performance of traditional protection schemes as a first step towards developing future remedial solutions ensuring effective protection under high share of IBRs.