Sensitivity analysis and performance ranking of different passive power system parameters for islanding detection

Islanding detection is essential for the protection of distributed energy systems assisted by high penetration of renewable based distributed energy resources. The islanding condition indicates the situation in which the distributed network or microgrid is isolated from the utility grid but autonomously continues to supply power to the nearby loads within its jurisdiction. However, the islanding situation causes the fundamental governance and operational challenge. Therefore islanding detecting is a key requirement for the safe operation of the network. Among all types of islanding detection techniques (IDTs), the passive type IDTs are mostly used due to its low cost, simple and its only depend on the measurement of parameters. For designing of passive IDTs, different power system parameters (i.e. frequency, voltage, etc) are used. Every parameter has its own sensitivity capability and less sensitive parameters are not suitable to use in passive IDTs as it may cause an un-necessary islanding. In this paper, 34 different parameter combinations are tested under different non-islanding (with varying load and fault) and islanding conditions at different power mismatch between local load and generations. The performance of these parameters at non-islanding cases are compared with islanding condition at respective power mismatch. It was found that passive parameters dv/dq, df/dq, dv/dp, df/dp, dpf/dq and dpf/dp indicate the significant difference under different grid connected operational mode and islanding conditions and ranked them accordingly. This ranking shows that few parameters have unique behaviour during islanding condition which will help researchers for the proper selection of passive parameters to design passive IDTs.