Power system islanding detection & identification using topology approach and decision tree

Power system islanding contingency has always been one of the most severe wide area system failures. The recent Hurricane Gustav landed in west coast in 2008 was one exact case to illuminate the importance and severity of this kind of contingencies. Longtime the researches of islanding situations focus on studying the coherence groups of the generations under an islanding contingency. In this paper, a new method in detecting power system islanding contingencies using both the system´s topological structure and real-time system dynamic state variables is presented and tested. An islanding severity index concept is given for ranking the severity of the islanding cases.