Advanced testbed to assess disturbances in electrical grids with DERs using relays/meters with varying sampling frequencies

Distributed energy resources (DERs) are vital to achieve clean energy goals, but in some cases, their rapid deployment has led to negative effects on their reliability because of possible voltages and/or current disturbances that need to be analyzed in detail. This study created an advanced testbed with a real-time simulator and synchronized time and trigger event systems was created to compare event disturbances from intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) with different sampling frequencies and locations in an electrical grid containing DERs. This testbed is capable of capturing the recorded events of multiple IEDs and the real-time simulator to assess the effect of the disturbances and IEDs’ behaviors, including phase voltages, phase current waveforms, and total harmonic distortion (THD) analysis. In this study, a three-line-to-ground electrical fault was simulated, the disturbance event was detected, and recorded events (from 4 to 133 samples per cycle) were collected from meters and relays located at different sites. A harmonic peak algorithm, which was based on measuring the phase voltage and phase current THD peaks at the first one-cycle of the disturbance events, was created to assess and detect the fault states and locations. Several important findings resulted from performing this study, such as selecting IEDs with high sampling frequencies, installing all IEDs with similar sampling frequencies, assessing the software limitations for computing THD, studying the effect of the IEDs’ locations (downstream or upstream) with respect to the electrical fault site and the distance from the disturbance event point, evaluating the percentage errors of the phase voltage THD peaks at the first one-cycle of disturbance events, and installing synchronized time source and trigger event signal systems for recording the IEDs’ events.