Investigating Inverter-Based Resources Impacts on the Transmission Line Protection via Hardware-in-the-loop Simulation

Fault responses of inverter-based resources (IBR) are primarily dictated by the control algorithms and are fundamentally different from conventional synchronous generators. Hardware-in-the-loop simulation, commonly viewed as a robust tool for protection setting prototyping and testing, is used in this paper to investigate the impact of a wind farm, with type-4 full converter wind turbines, on the protection of a 345 kV transmission line in Texas, United States. This paper discusses two critical topics in detail: (1) wind farm IBR model development and validation against vendor PSCAD model, and (2) IBR impacts on distance and current differential protection.