Analysis of Passive Islanding Detection Techniques for Double Line Fault in Three Phase Microgrid System

Abstract

Microgrids are able to dispatch power to distribution systems with the advancement of power electronics-based inverters. As per IEEE-1547-2018 standards, Microgrid has to maintain voltage of 0.88 < V < 1.1 p.u (per unit) and frequency of 58.8< f_0 < 61.2 Hz and detect un-intentional faults in less than 2 seconds to bring Microgrid into islanding mode seamlessly. Unless these faults are detected and Microgrid is islanded, the system stability cannot be maintained and Microgrid cannot feed the connected loads. To detect these unsymmetrical faults, to bring the Microgrid to islanding mode and to be stable during non-islanding cases like loads switch on and throw off at Point of Common Coupling (PCC), a passive islanding detection method, Rate Of Change Of Voltage Phase Angle (ROCOVPA) is proposed. The methodology is simple. First, the voltage phase angle of generator bus and the grid is monitored. Then, absolute value is found and finally differentiated to get ROCOVPA and detect islanding. Also, this technique is compared with the widely used method of Rate Of Change Of Frequency (ROCOF) at different percentage active and reactive power mismatches. It also avoids nuisance tripping so that Microgrid's stability is maintained. This method is tested for un-symmetrical double line fault, for islanding cases and switch on or throw off, for non-islanding cases with linear and non-linear loads. In this method, the power quality is also not affected because of no perturbations during testing and the Non-Detection Zone (NDZ) is almost zero. The proposed method is verified by simulating islanding and non-islanding conditions in MATLAB/Simulink and by comparing with ROCOF method and found effective.

Keywords

• distributed generation
• line to line fault
• non-detection zone
• point of common coupling
• rate of change of frequency
• rate of change of voltage phase angle.