Comparison of Possible Future Passive Islanding Detection Methods

Abstract

Due to growing distributed generation penetration level at all voltage levels in the future Smart Grids there is an increased need for high performance islanding detection (anti-islanding protection) methods. A large non-detection zone near a power balance situation and unwanted distributed generation tripping due to other network events have been the major drawbacks of traditional, passive local islanding detection methods. Usually these traditional methods have also been dependent on the type of the distributed generation unit. In this paper the performance of three different possible future, local measurements based, passive islanding detection methods are compared. Performance comparison of these islanding detection methods is done in terms of size of non-detection zone, detection speed and possible detection speed dependency from power unbalance before islanding as well as possibility to mal-operate during frequency fluctuations and faults in the utility grid