An application of evaporation-rate-based water cycle algorithm for coordination of over-current relays in microgrid

Relay coordination is reliable and crucial to guarantee that healthy feeders are properly isolated from the defective areas in a microgrid network. An appropriate protection scheme must be properly planned during the design of the microgrid to ensure safety for the power components in the event of a failure. The implementation of distributed generators in the microgrid changes the total network’s Load-Flow and often impacts the magnitude and direction of the fault current. Using the nature-inspired novel evaporation-rate-based water cycle algorithm (ERWCA), the enhancement in microgrid protection is accomplished in this work by optimizing the relay settings, reducing their operation time and time dial setting of each relay. The approach proposed is validated with the IEC microgrid benchmark system and the findings are contrasted with current techniques. It is found that the proposed strategy produces substantial improvement for the microgrid in the application of over-current relays and greatly reduces the relays’ overall net operating time.