Islanding detection of inverter-based distributed generation

Abstract

An active islanding detection technique for an inverter-based distributed generator (DG) is presented. Two control strategies are studied: one in which the DG only supplies active power and one in which the DG supplies both active and reactive power to improve the power factor. The nondetection zone (NDZ) of the over/under voltage and frequency protection (OVP/UVP and OFP/UFP) method for each control strategy is determined. For the presented interface control, it is observed that the NDZ of the OVP/UVP and OFP/UFP is larger when the DG interface is designed to improve the power factor. In order to decrease the NDZ, an islanding detection method is designed that is based on creating a mismatch between the load and DG reactive power, thus forcing the frequency to deviate outside the OFP/UFP limits. It is shown that the proposed islanding detection technique is robust and has a negligible NDZ.