A new passive islanding detection technique for different zones in utility grid

Abstract

Distributed generation (DG) has reformed the meaning of traditional generation of power from large-scale to small-scale generation. The main issue of connecting the DG to the utility grid is the detection of unintended islanding. This paper shows the impact of the islanding phenomenon in the case of grid-connected photovoltaic arrays and how to develop a convenient technique to detect this phenomenon. A passive islanding detection algorithm is proposed for all types of DGs by varying and analyzing the DC-link voltage for voltage source converter in the photovoltaic inverter. The proposed algorithm is applied on the low and medium voltage scales. Furthermore, a comparison for applying the proposed technique with resistance load on the two scales is presented. In addition, the proposed technique for anti-islanding protection is performed and compared with a lot of techniques such as underfrequency, overfrequency, and rate of change of frequency according to the detection time of islanding. The simulation results using MATLAB/ SIMULINK platform illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.