Adaptive Protection and Control for High Penetration PV and Grid Resilience

This final technical report documents a multi-year effort to redesign distribution-system protection for grids with high penetrations of photovoltaic and other inverter-based resources. The project develops a model-based Adaptive Protection Platform that continuously updates a digital representation of the system and optimizes relay settings, along with Local Adaptive Modular Protection units that can maintain protection capability when communications are unavailable. It also develops machine-learning and signal-based protection methods, traveling-wave techniques, and fast time-domain fault-location algorithms intended for low-inertia AC and DC systems where conventional overcurrent and sequence-domain methods can perform poorly. The technologies were evaluated through simulation, real-time hardware-in-the-loop testing, custom DSP hardware, and field demonstrations on the Kirtland Air Force Base microgrid. The project showed that coordinated protection can adapt to changing DER conditions in real time, remain functional during communication loss, and detect and locate faults rapidly, providing a protection architecture designed for more resilient distribution systems with high inverter penetration.