Anti-Islanding Detector Based on a Robust PLL

As required by international standards, the distributed energy generators, connected to the grid by an inverter, have to detect an islanding condition within a suitable time interval. In this paper, a phase-locked loop (PLL), based on a third-order prediction-correction filter, is proposed to implement an islanding detector with reduced detection time. Such a feature is obtained using the estimation of the grid angular frequency and acceleration provided by the PLL with a negligible time delay. The proposed approach is implemented on an industrial grade DSP and validated through the experimental comparison among different detection methods, such as rate of change of frequency (ROCOF) and Slip Mode frequency Shift (SMS). The combined use of ROCOF and SMS is also illustrated and discussed.