Analysis of protection system's risk in distribution networks with DG

Using Distributed Generation (DG) is an interesting topic that has drawn attention of electrical engineers in recent years. The presence of these generation units in distribution systems, although has many advantages and benefits, has to be applied after performing detailed studies and investigations due to their complexities in operation, control and protection of network. One of the major effects of DGs is their effect on protection operation of distribution networks. In this paper after reviewing this influence, risk analysis of protection system's operation in a test distribution network according to various locations and capacities of DGs has been performed. For this purpose, three indexes for presenting the system's risk has been introduced and calculated in different investigated cases. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.