Evaluation of the performance of impedance-based fault location methods in the presence of high penetration of inverter-based resources

Innovation in the development of power electronics is evolving on a large scale, offering greater presence of Inverter-Based Resources (IBRs) in the electrical power system. However, this also gives rise to new challenges, such as maintaining the operational integrity of the system in the event of faults in transmission lines with high IBR penetration. In this sense, traditional protection elements may not operate properly and consequently lead the system to undesirable operating conditions. Therefore, this paper quantitatively evaluates the impact of inverter-based resources on the accuracy of one- and two-terminal fault location methods in different scenarios and with different levels of renewable energy penetration in the 39-node IEEE system. Both methods were compared based on the relative error of the fault distance, finding that the single-terminal method increases the error rate compared to the two-terminal method, which exhibits greater robustness.