In the scenario of an evolving distribution network with an ever-increasing integration of distributed generation, it is necessary to maintain a high quality of the supply and, therefore, fault protection system shall guarantee the best possible performance. In this regard, the protection devices based on the analysis of electromagnetic transients have potentially useful characteristics, such as finding faults that are difficult to identify by traditional systems, even in less time.

After the activity of the previous year, consisting in the review of the protection techniques based on the analysis of electromagnetic transients, especially travelling waves, a preliminary verification of some of these techniques has been carried out by means of digital simulations with the ATPDraw software. The adopted methodology consisted in defining a simple test distribution network in its individual components.

he model adopted for each one of them has been described and its implementation has been shown, with particular attention to power lines and power transformers. Different faults have been simulated in the test network and the extracted waveforms have been given as input to the protection algorithms under examination.

The obtained results show that:

(i) the model chosen for the electrical network components significantly affects the waveform shape of fast transients;

(ii) the wavelet transform is a signal processing technique suitable for the purpose.

The activity presented in this technical report lays the foundations for future tests of these protection methods in network scenarios more responsive to real networks conditions with which to explore the potential of transient-based techniques.

The Report is available on the Italian site