IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - May/June 2021 - 19

rural areas, where existing protection
schemes can be extended and adapted
to IBRs.
Sophisticated solutions (such as the
use of differential relays that sense the
phase differences between the current
entering and leaving the feeder) may be
needed where overcurrent-based solutions do not detect faults or coordinate
with the system. As always, there are
compromises concerning costs and the
extent of technology deployed. For example, ideally, every feeder section has
a primary zone for protection to provide
quick-acting and selective clearing of a
fault within its boundary. Also, backup
protection can be installed to isolate the
faulty section of the system in case the
primary protection does not function
properly. However, applying such design principles to every feeder section
would be cost-prohibitive in practice.
Smart grid research and product development will bring additional tech-

nology, such as advanced sensors and
faster communication networks, to provide transformational solutions where
traditional ones may be infeasible or
become too expensive.
We see control and protection becoming more integrated, especially as they
concern IBRs. Since inverter controls
drive the fault response, fault detection
and classification can be derived from
these controls. As the microgrid is
likely to have a controller, the controller may also include protection functions that can be implemented through
communication.
In the foreseeable future, microgrid
capabilities will be aggregated to participate in wholesale electricity markets and supply a wide range of grid
services at the distribution and transmission levels. To enable that future,
the coordination of microgrid protection systems with interconnected distribution system protection is a ne-

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Acknowledgments
Microgrid protection is not an everyday topic and is not easily explained to
a broad audience. In putting this issue
together, we are fortunate to have had
the support of Editor-in-Chief Steve
Widergren and the technical and editorial assistants, Ning Lu and Susan
O'Bryan. Their guidance helped give
clarity to presenting this complex topic.
We wish to thank the authors for their
patience through the editorial process
and their dedication to this issue. Indeed, the result is a set of articles that
brings the urgent needs for advancing
microgrid protection schemes and the
significance of developing microgrid
protection codes and standards to a
broad audience in the power systems
engineering community.
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