Due to the inclusion of Distributed Generation (DG) in modern power systems, there are certain changes in the distribution and transmission stage, either by impedance reflected by the lines, the increase of short circuit currents, or the X/R relation, seen from the different nodes on the grid. This context has a direct impact on protection coordination which is the priority of study in this paper but it is important to denote that another characteristic affected by the DG is the power quality like voltage sags, swells, and harmonics. One of the significant impacts due to the DG is the reverse power flow (RPF), which generally occur when the generation of a distributed electric power plant exceeds the local load demand, causing power to flow in the opposite direction to normal, this phenomenon can be produced by the intermittency in the renewable energies, that depends of climatic factors. The consequences can be evidenced in the power system with voltage peaks; therefore the sensitivity and various parameters of protection coordination are critically affected, furthermore has implications in the power quality. This work proposes a tool to identify possible scenarios of reverse power flows and a feasible solution is introduced. A comparative assessment is done to minimize the possibility of an RPF in the IEEE 13 Nodes radial system with conclusive results.

In this paper, a new strategy to control microgrids highly penetrated by voltage source converters (VSCs) is proposed. The strategy is based on the instantaneous measurements and calculations of voltages and currents and the application of instantaneous power theory. This approach employs each VSC along with an LC filter as a current source. The grid parameters are not known to the controller, only the filter inductance and capacitance. The approach characterizes a theoretical methodology to define a grid status parameter that provides multiple alternatives to operate the VSC autonomously. Moreover, one of those alternatives is sharing load among VSCs by regulating the voltage of the local connection bus. This grid status parameter is an external voltage contribution vector defined by the operation of the other VSCs in the microgrid. Because of the definition of this parameter, frequency manipulation is not employed as a communication link between VSCs, avoiding perturbation to the grid stability. The approach provides an approximation of the equivalent impedance of the system seen from the filter output. The load-sharing scheme under the proposed strategy is fully described. An experimental validation is performed in order to test the proposed approach for load sharing between three VSCs and the inclusion of nonlinear load.

Advanced Distribution Automation (ADA) has become a topic of considerable interest in the electric power industry; moreover, for the development of ADA it is necessary to build new methodologies and computational tools to support the distribution networks (DN) simulation with Real Time Hardware in the Loop (RT-HIL) techniques, reducing the design and testing times at low cost. OpenDSS is a free powerful software platform to simulate DN including the models for distributed generation; the RT-HIL systems improve the OpenDSS capabilities, interfacing the data delivered for this platform using analog and digital signals in Real Time (RT). This way, the design engineer and external hardware can interact with the DN like in the real scenario switching and analyzing the response of the system. As result, in this paper the Real time analytical simulation of the IEEE 13 Nodes system is presented; this with the aim of evaluating the performance of the developed tool. All the developments were made using National Instruments Real Time hardware architectures, OpenDSS software and the LabVIEW® RT software. Finally, the different possibilities with the developed tool and the future developments are presented.

Aspects of terrestrial microgrids and ship power systems are examined. The work exposes a variety of technical synergies from these two power systems to effectively advance their technologies. Understanding their overlap allows congruent efforts to target both systems; understanding their differences hinders conflict and redundancy in early-stage design. The paper concludes by highlighting how an understanding of both systems can reduce the investment in research resources.

There is a general interest from manufacturers, users, regulation institutions, and research around electric vehicles development and its relation with the grid infrastructure. The penetration of electric vehicles in distribution networks brings considerable challenges in terms of power quality, particularly harmonic emissions. Such challenges are more evident in scenarios with high penetration of electric vehicles which consider the clustering effect in the charging process. Methodologies such as hosting capacity model electric vehicles as a constant power load with constant harmonic distortion along the entire charging process. This article presents the relationship between the charging algorithms of the electric vehicle chargers, the state of charge of the batteries, and the harmonic current distortion generated during the charging process. This model proposes that the harmonic current distortion depends on the state of charge of the battery and the charging algorithm of the vehicle. As this study would change meaningfully, the current studies of power quality related to electric vehicles, practical measurements in two charging stations, and offline simulations of the identified on-board chargers are shown to support the content of this article.

This paper proposes an application of an evolutionary game dynamics called the escort dynamics (ED) for the decentralized load management of plug-in electric vehicles (PEV). Different from earlier contributions, in the present approach, PEVs work together in a fair scheme in order to provide several ancillary services to the grid: Load shifting, active power balancing, and partial supply of reactive power demand on each phase of the distribution transformer. Meanwhile, batteries are guaranteed to be fully charged according to the constraints imposed by the owners. In the proposed formulation, chargers can be either three phase or single phase; however, in this paper, only three-phase chargers are considered. The key concepts behind ED, especially for escort functions, are provided at the beginning of this paper. Based on these concepts, the assumptions and analogies followed for the construction of the proposed approach are explained in detail, especially for the proposed definition of escort functions. A multipopulation scenario is proposed for the interaction of several PEVs using local ED routines. This interaction among populations follows another well-known evolutionary game dynamics called the best reply dynamics. Performance is evaluated using real data measured from a distribution transformer from the SOREA utility grid company in the region of Savoie, France.