Islanding Detection of Distributed Generation Using Electrical Variables in Space Vector Domain

This paper presents a new approach for islanding detection in distribution systems incorporating synchronous generator-based distributed generations. The proposed method first utilizes the dynamic equations of three electrical variables under islanding situations. The variables are: Change of frequency; rate of change of frequency; and rotor angle deviation. Second, transformation of these variables is conducted in the space vector domain, which gives rise to three parameters, namely, semi-major axis, semi-minor axis, and inclination angle. Finally, exploiting these parameters, a decision boundary is established to classify grid events resulting in the formation of an island or not. The proposed method is comprehensively investigated under different operating conditions, which include excess/deficit of reactive/active power imbalance scenarios in the formed island containing different load-types (constant impedance, constant power, and constant current) with varying quality factor. A large variety of islanding and non-islanding events are generated using a practical distribution network simulated in real time on OPAL-RT digital simulation platform under the aforementioned operating conditions. A detailed evaluation of the proposed approach is conducted and it demonstrates the effectiveness of the method.