Decaying DC Offset Current Mitigation in Phasor Estimation Applications: A Review

Decaying DC (DDC) offset current mitigation is a vital challenge in phasor current estimation since it causes malfunctioning/maloperation of measurements and protection systems. Due to the inductive nature of electric power systems, the current during fault inception cannot change immediately and it contains a transient oscillation. The oscillatory component acts similar to an exponential DC signal and its characteristics depend on the X/R ratio of the system, fault location, and fault impedance. DDC attenuates accurate phasor estimation, which is pivotal in protection systems. Therefore, the DDC must be eliminated from the fault current (FC) signal. This paper presents an overview of DDC mitigation methods by considering different groups—before the discrete Fourier transform (pre-DFT), after the discrete Fourier transform (post-DFT), the least square-based (LS-based), and other methods. Through a comprehensive review of the existing schemes, the effects of noise, harmonics, multiple DDCs (MDDCs), and off-nominal frequency (ONF) on the accuracy of DDC estimation, were recognized. A detailed discussion (along with some simulation results) are presented to address the main advantages/disadvantages of the past studies. Finally, this paper presents a few suggestions for future researchers, for researchers to investigate more implementable solutions in this field.