ai-driven protection schemes for modern power grids: technologies, challenges, and opportunities

The rapid evolution of modern power grids, driven by the large-scale integration of intermittent renewable energy sources, distributed generation, and power electronic interfaces, has significantly challenged the effectiveness of conventional threshold-based protection schemes. traditional systems often exhibit limited performance under dynamic fault currents, evolving network topologies, and complex transients, increasing the risk of maloperation and reduced system resilience. in this context, artificial intelligence (ai) has emerged as a promising data-driven paradigm to enhance the intelligence and reliability of grid protection. this paper presents a comprehensive review of ai-driven protection schemes for modern power grids, systematically analyzing underlying technologies, key challenges, and emerging opportunities. a structured taxonomy of ai methodologies—ranging from machine learning (ml) and deep learning (dl) to reinforcement learning (rl) and hybrid systems—is developed, with a focus on their applications in fault detection, classification, location, and adaptive relay coordination. particular emphasis is placed on recent advancements reported after 2022, highlighting the adoption of advanced models such as vision transformers, graph neural networks (gnns), and physics-informed neural networks (pinns) to address grid nonlinearity and data scarcity. furthermore, the paper critically examines major barriers to large-scale deployment, including explainability (xai), cybersecurity vulnerabilities, and real-time computational constraints. finally, a strategic roadmap is proposed, identifying future research directions such as digital twins, federated learning, and edge ai to bridge the gap between theoretical models and practical, self-healing protection systems.