Analysis and performance assessment of the active frequency drift method of islanding prevention

Author

Ropp, M.E. ; Begovic, M. ; Rohatgi, A.

Author_Institution

Sch. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Georgia Inst. of Technol., Atlanta, GA, USA

Volume

14

Issue

3

fYear

1999

fDate

9/1/1999 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

810

Lastpage

816

Abstract

Islanding of photovoltaic (PV) systems can cause a variety of problems and must be prevented. However, if the real and reactive powers of the load and PV system are closely matched, islanding detection by passive methods becomes difficult. Also, most active methods lose effectiveness when there are several PV systems feeding the same island. The active frequency drift method (AFD), also called the frequency bias method, enables islanding detection by forcing the frequency of the voltage in the island to drift up or down. In this paper, AFD is studied analytically, using the describing function analysis technique, and by simulation, using MATLAB. It is shown that AFD has a nondetection zone (NDZ) in which it fails to detect islanding, and that this NDZ includes a range of unity-power-factor loads. Finally, the paper describes a novel method using positive feedback which significantly shrinks the size of the AFD NDZ

Keywords

control system analysis; photovoltaic power systems; power system faults; power system interconnection; power system protection; power system stability; MATLAB; PV power system islanding prevention; active frequency drift method; describing function analysis technique; frequency bias method; nondetection zone; performance assessment; positive feedback; unity-power-factor loads; Equations; Frequency; Mesh generation; Performance analysis; Photovoltaic systems; Production systems; Reactive power; Solar power generation; Switches; Voltage;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Energy Conversion, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0885-8969

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/60.790956

Filename

790956