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

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...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on electron devices 1999-09, Vol.14 (3), p.810-816
Main Authors: Ropp, M.E., Begovic, M., Rohatgi, A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
CONTROL THEORY
Drift
Electric potential
Equations
FEEDBACK
Frequency
Frequency drift
INTERCONNECTED POWER SYSTEMS
Islands
Matlab
Mesh generation
OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY
Performance analysis
PHOTOVOLTAIC POWER PLANTS
Photovoltaic systems
Positive feedback
POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION
Production systems
Reactive power
Solar cells
SOLAR ENERGY
Solar power generation
Switches
Voltage
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Summary: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.
ISSN:0885-8969
0018-9383
1558-0059
1557-9646
DOI:10.1109/60.790956