A New intelligent method of Fuse – Recloser Coordination in a Distribution System with High PV Penetration Rates

Employment of photovoltaic (PV) distributed generation (DG) in the distribution system, leads to improvement of network voltage profile and help to generate the power required by the network. Beside the mentioned advantages, increment of these sources penetration rate cause miscoordination between fuses and recloser. In this paper a new adaptive intelligent method of fuse – recloser coordination in distribution systems with high PV penetration rates is presented. The proposed method is a two-phase approach which operates proportional to the connected photovoltaic systems penetration rate. The first phase is based on an adaptive modification of fast operation curve of recloser, proportional to current term of the branch fuse maximum fault current to recloser current which is located at the beginning of the feeder. The second phase is according to modification of fast operation characteristic of recloser, proportional to voltage drop in fault inception period at the recloser location. By using this method, not only the avoidance of unnecessary exits of PV resources, but also the operation of fuse-saving is possible with adaptive correction of the fast-performance curve of the recloser.