IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 21, NO.

3, JULY 2006

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Impact of DG Interface Control on Islanding

Detection and Nondetection Zones
H. H. Zeineldin, Member, IEEE, Ehab F. El-Saadany, Senior Member, IEEE, and M. M. A. Salama, Fellow, IEEE

AbstractIslanding detection of Distributed Generation (DG) is

considered as one of the most important aspects when interconnecting DGs to the distribution system. With the increasing penetration and reliance of the distribution systems on DGs, new interface control strategies are being proposed. Aside from its main
task of supplying active power, the DG could provide voltage support, improve the power factor, or mitigate other power quality
problems. This paper examines the impact of the interface control
strategy of inverter based DGs on islanding detection. The Nondetective Zone (NDZ) for over/under voltage and over/under frequency is derived analytically for each interface control and validated by simulation.
Index TermsDistributed generation (DG), interface control, inverter, islanding, pulse-width modulation.

I. INTRODUCTION

ISTRIBUTED generation (DG) provides many potential

benefits, such as peak shaving, fuel switching, improved
power quality and reliability, increased efficiency, and improved
environmental performance. Many countries are trying to meet
the targets set in the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions. DG provides an attractive option to accomplish this
task. In the last few years, small DGs in the range of 100 kW
have gained popularity amongst industry and utilities.
For DG systems producing a DC voltage, an inverter is used
to interface the DG system with the grid. The switching of the
inverter is determined based on a certain implemented control
strategy [1]. The DG could be designed to supply active power
or both active and reactive power. Aside from controlling the
DG output power, the DG interface control performs an additional function, which is anti-islanding protection [2]. A DG is
islanded when it supplies power to some loads while the main
utility source is disconnected.
Anti-islanding detection methods can be divided into two
main groups: passive and active methods. In passive methods,
the decision whether an islanding condition occurred or not is
based on measuring a certain system parameter and comparing
it with a predetermined threshold. Active methods are designed
to force the DG to be unstable during an islanding situation.
Most of the islanding detection methods developed focused
on DGs that operate at unity power factor. Recently, much work
has been focusing on the DG interface to the grid and its operation and control. In [3], the interface control was designed to
Manuscript received February 17, 2005; revised May 13, 2005. Paper no.
TPWRD-00091-2005.
The authors are with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada (e-mail:
[email protected]).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRD.2005.858773

supply active power and improve the power factor at the point of
interconnection of the DG. In [4], the proposed interface control
takes into account DG islanding protection by proposing a control scheme that supplies active power, improves power factor
and provides active islanding detection. In [5], a new control
scheme for DGs using a current controlled Voltage Source Inverter (VSI) was proposed. Besides conditioning the power fed
by the DG, power quality problems were mitigated. In [6], the
interface control was designed to provide voltage support by
supplying both active and reactive power, especially during the
peak load time. The mitigation of unbalance in voltage and harmonics using the interface control of the DG was proposed in
[7]. In [8] and [9], control techniques of inverter based DGs that
focus on improving the power quality and ensuring continuity
of supply were discussed. With distribution systems increasing
reliance on DGs, utilizing the DG to inject reactive power aside
from supplying active power is one of the targets in the DG interface design.
In this paper, several interface controls for DGs are presented
and their performance is studied during an islanding situation.
Based on the performance of the interface control, an additional parameter is implemented in parallel with the Over/Under
Voltage and Over/Under frequency (OVP/UVP and OFP/UFP)
for some of the presented interfaces to reduce the NDZ. The
impact of DG interface control on the NDZ of OVP/UVP and
OFP/UFP is analyzed.
The paper is organized as follows: Section II presents an
overview on different anti-islanding protection methods. Simulation results illustrating the performance of each interface
control during an islanding condition is presented in Section III.
The effect of the interface control on the NDZ of OVP/UVP
and OFP/UFP is discussed in Section IV. In Section V, the
scope of the paper is discussed. Finally, conclusions are drawn
in Section V.
II. DG ISLANDING PROTECTION
DG systems are connected to the distribution system through
an inverter as shown in Fig. 1. The inverter performs two main
functions:
1) Controlling the active power output of the DG and, in
some cases, injecting a suitable amount of reactive power
to mitigate a power quality problem.
2) According to the IEEE Standard 1547, the DG should
be equipped with an anti-islanding detection algorithm,
which could be performed using the inverter interface
control (active methods).

0885-8977/$20.00 2006 IEEE

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Fig. 1. Single line diagram of the system under study consisting of a DG, grid
and RLC load.

As mentioned earlier, passive islanding detection techniques

depend on measuring system parameters and setting thresholds
for the measurable parameters. The main challenge when designing a passive islanding detection method is the choice of a
suitable islanding measure and its threshold value. Thresholds
are chosen such that the islanding detection algorithm will not
operate for other disturbances on the system. As a result, passive methods suffer from large NDZ.
Over/under voltage and frequency is one of the simplest passive methods used in islanding detection. The thresholds on the
voltage and frequency and the maximum allowable islanding
detection trip time could be found in [2], [10]. Unfortunately, if
the load and the generation on the island are closely matched,
the change in voltage and frequency might be very small and
within the thresholds, thus leading to an undetected islanding
situation.
Parameters used to detect islanding include Total Harmonic
Distortion (THD), the rate of change of active power, the ratio
of frequency variation to load variation [11][13]. Other parameters used for passive islanding detection methods can be
found in [14]. To enhance the performance of islanding detection methods and decrease the NDZ, several methods have
been proposed which use more than one parameter to detect islanding. In [15], both the rate of change of voltage and change
in power factor were used to detect islanding. In [16], islanding
was detected using the voltage unbalance and the THD of the
DG current. In [17], both reactive and active power variations
were used as means for islanding detection.
In active methods, small variations at the output of the DG
are created by designing a control circuit that provides the necessary variations. If the DG is operating in parallel to the distribution system, negligible changes occuring in the frequency or
output power will not be sufficient in initiating the operation of
the protective relay responsible for disconnecting the DG. However, once the utility is disconnected, the variation becomes significant and the DG is disconnected. Unfortunately, the small
changes produced by the active methods control circuit may
affect the power quality of the system. Active methods include
Active Frequency Drift method (AFD), output power variation,
Slip Mode Frequency Shift, and etc. [14].
Section III studies the performance of each interface control
during an islanding condition. Active power, reactive power, frequency and voltage waveforms are monitored. Based on the simulation results, an additional parameter is implemented in parallel with the OVP/UVP and OFP/UFP to decrease the NDZ.

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 21, NO. 3, JULY 2006

Fig. 2. Block diagram of a constant current controlled inverter.

III. DG PERFORMANCE DURING AN ISLANDING CONDITION

The system under study consists of a 100 kW inverter based
DG connected to an RLC load having a quality factor of 1.8
and a grid as illustrated in Fig. 1. The filter inductance is dependent on the maximum switching frequency and the inverter
DC voltage [5], [18]. The system, controller, and load parameters are given in the Appendix [19]. The performance of the
DG under normal and islanded operating conditions was studied
and simulated on PSCAD/EMTDC. Based on [10], the real load
power was adjusted to place the inverter at 25%, 50%, 100%,
and 125% of the inverters rated output. The reactive power
was adjusted between 95% and 105% of the balanced condition (unity power factor loading) in 1% steps [10]. For brevity,
the following four loading conditions are presented:
Case 1) Load is adjusted to operate the inverter at 100%
of its rated active power output and 100% reactive
power balance.
Case 2) Load is adjusted to operate the inverter at 50% of its
rated active power output and 100% reactive power
balance.
Case 3) Load is adjusted to operate the inverter at 100%
of its rated active power output and 101% of the
reactive power balance condition.
Case 4) Load is adjusted to operate the inverter at 125% of
its rated active power output and 95% of the reactive
power balance condition.
A. Constant Current Controlled Inverter
The DG interface control is designed to supply constant current output as shown in Fig. 2. For this interface control, both
and components of the DG output current are controlled to be
and
). To examine the perforequal to a preset value (
mance of the DG under islanding conditions, the grid was disseconds. Figs. 36 present the active power
connected at
output of the DG, reactive power output of the DG, frequency
and voltage at the PCC. The DG was operated at unity power
to zero.
factor by setting
Based on the simulation results, there are cases (Case 2 and
Case 4) where the OVP/UVP and OFP/UFP will be capable of
detecting islanding and others (Case 1 and Case 3) where it
would fail. The significant feature of this interface control is that
both the voltage and DG active power output decrease during
an islanding situation and one of them could be used as a measure to detect islanding. This is as a result of the constant current operation of the DG. For a constant preset current output

ZEINELDIN et al.: IMPACT OF DG INTERFACE CONTROL ON ISLANDING DETECTION

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Fig. 3. Active power output of the DG.

Fig. 6. Voltage at the PCC.

Fig. 7. Proposed islanding detection method for constant current controlled

inverter based DG.

Fig. 4. Reactive power output of the DG.

ligible change will occur in both voltage and active power, is

2.304 . With the utility connected, the DG active power output
is maintained at 100 kW at nominal voltage. Thus, the variation
in active power could be used in parallel, as a measure to detect islanding, with the OVP/UVP and OFP/UFP to decrease the
NDZ. Fig. 7 shows the designed islanding detection method for
,
,
, and
are
current controlled DGs, where
the maximum and minimum allowable frequency and voltage
represents a threshold on the amount of active
respectively.
equal to 5 kW, the NDZ
power deviation. For a value of
could be reduced by 50% as compared with the results given in
should be chosen accuthe Appendix. The time delay and
rately in order to avoid nuisance tripping due to disturbances or
fluctuations in the voltage level. It should be pointed out that
using an active islanding detection method could provide better
performance but the paper focuses on passive islanding detection methods.
B. Constant

Fig. 5. Frequency at the PCC.

and fixed load impedance, once islanding occurs, the voltage

and DG active power become dependent on the value of load
impedance. In other words, for a 100 kW DG operating at a line
voltage of 480 V, the load resistance value, for which a neg-

Controlled Inverter

This type of interface provides voltage support by injecting

reactive power at the PCC. Fig. 8 presents the block diagram
of the - interface control. Controlling both the active power
and voltage to a preset value is not feasible except for two
conditions.
1) The DG is connected in parallel with the utility. Any mismatch in power between the load and DG will be delivered/absorbed by the utility.
2) The load resistance satisfies the following condition:
(1)

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Fig. 8. Powervoltage controlled inverter.

Fig. 10.

Reactive power output of the DG.

Fig. 11.

Frequency at the PCC.

Fig. 12.

Voltage at the PCC.

Fig. 9. Active power output of the DG.

If islanding occurs and the load resistance does not equal the
resistance calculated in (1), then the DG frequency becomes unstable. Figs. 912 present the active power output of the DG,
reactive power output of the DG, frequency and voltage at the
PCC. It can be seen that the performance of this interface is different from the previous one. Based on the simulation results, for
both cases 1 and 3, both the voltage and frequency remain within
their standard permissible levels after islanding occurance and
islanding will not be detected. This is as a result of the balance
between the load and rated DG active power output. Although
the load absorbs reactive power (Case 3), the frequency remains
at approximately 60 Hz after the DG is islanded due to the capability of this interface of supplying reactive power. For the remaining two cases (Case 2 and Case 4), due to the active power
mismatch, the DG becomes unstable and the frequency deviates, thus islanding could be detected using the OVP/UVP and
OFP/UFP.
The significant feature for this interface is the frequency at
the PCC. The rate of change of frequency (ROCOF) could be
used as a parameter for detecting islanding for closely matched
active power conditions to reduce the NDZ. Fig. 13 shows the
islanding detection algorithm used to detect islanding for controlled inverter based DGs. Similarly, the limits for ROCOF

and the time delay are chosen to avoid nuisance tripping.

With the ROCOF operating in parallel with the OVP/UVP and

ZEINELDIN et al.: IMPACT OF DG INTERFACE CONTROL ON ISLANDING DETECTION

Fig. 13. Proposed islanding detection method for constant

inverter-based DG.

P -V

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controlled

Fig. 16.

Reactive power output of the DG.

Fig. 17.

Frequency at the PCC.

Fig. 14. Block diagram of a PQ controlled inverter.

Fig. 15.

Active power output of the DG.

OFP/UFP for - controlled interfaces, the NDZ becomes

very small and thus, implementing an active islanding detection
method will not decrease the NDZ of the proposed islanding
detection method significantly.
C. Constant

Controlled Inverter

In this case, the active and reactive powers are controlled to

a preset value as shown in Fig. 14. Figs. 1518 present the active power output of the DG, reactive power output of the DG,
frequency and voltage at the PCC. The voltage level at the PCC
is affected by the active power mismatch while the frequency at
the PCC is affected by the reactive power mismatch.

Fig. 18. Voltage at the PCC.

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Assuming that the load can be represented as a parallel RLC

circuit, these relations can be written in terms of voltage
and frequency
as follows:
(2)
(3)
It can be seen that the value of the PCC voltage is dependent
on the island load active power. If the amount of power mismatch is not large enough, the deviation in PCC voltage will not
be sufficient to trigger the OVP/UVP. Similarly, for a DG operating at unity power factor, if the load on the island absorbs
reactive power, the frequency at the PCC will deviate in order
to satisfy the unity power factor operation of the DG. In other
words, the frequency will deviate until it reaches the resonance
frequency of the load on the island as shown in Fig. 17.
For this interface, both the active and reactive power output
of the DG remain fixed, even after islanding occurrence. From
the simulation results, the OVP/UVP and OFP/UFP can detect
islanding for cases 2 and 4 and will fail to detect for cases 1
and 3. Since, the active power stabilizes at 100 kW even after
islanding, thus, the islanding detection algorithm proposed in
Fig. 7 will fail for - controlled interfaces. Besides that, the
algorithm presented in Fig. 13 using ROCOF can be used to detect islanding. The application of ROCOF for - controlled
interfaces will not be as affective as in the case of - controlled inverters. This is due to the fact that the - interface
control becomes unstable during islanding condition. On the
other hand, the - interface stabilizes at the resonance frequency once islanding occurs. If the resonance frequency is in
close proximity to the 60 Hz value, the ROCOF will fail to detect islanding. Thus, implementing an active islanding detection
method could effectively reduce NDZ for the - controlled
inverters.

Fig. 19. NDZ for the constant current and constant P -Q interface controls.

where the current is constant for this type of interface. Since,

the reactive power is fixed at zero (unity power factor operation),
the frequency will deviate according to the following equation:
(6)
Despite the fact that constant power controlled inverter based
DGs perform the same task as constant current controlled DGs,
it was proven by simulations that their response to an islanding
situation is different. Similarly, when analyzing the NDZ of constant power DGs, the simulation shows a difference in the NDZ
between the two interface controls as shown in Appendix. For
an RLC load
(7)
Since is constant, then for small changes in , the change
in voltage can be expressed as follows by differentiating (7):

IV. NONDETECTION ZONES

One of the important characteristics to determine the effectiveness of an islanding detection method is the NDZ. NDZ is
the operating region where islanding conditions cannot be detected in a timely manner. It can either be represented in terms
of power mismatch or in terms of the R, L, and C of the load. In
[20], an approximate representation of the NDZ for OVP/UVP
was derived. An exact and accurate representation of the NDZ is
presented in the Appendix. The paper examines the NDZ of an
OVP/UVP and OFP/UVP islanding scheme when implemented
for constant current, - and - controlled inverters.
For the constant current controlled inverter DG, any change
in active power or load resistance will consequently produce a
change in the PCC voltage. This is expressed by Ohms Law as
follows:
(4)
and thus any small change can be represented by
(5)

(8)
By comparing (5) and (8), it can be seen that for a small
change in , the change in voltage will be different for each
type of interface for the same initial loading condition. Thus,
the NDZ will differ in both cases. Fig. 19 shows the NDZ of
both interfaces determined by simulation. The simulation results
match the calculated values given in the Appendix. The results
show that the NDZ for constant current controlled inverters is
controlled inverters. Thus, the design of the inless than
terface control has an effect on NDZ.
Regarding the constant - controlled inverter based DGs,
there is always a zero reactive power mismatch since the DG is
capable of supplying reactive power. Thus, the NDZ of a controlled inverter cannot be illustrated on a
curve. In
order to compare this interface with the previous ones, the NDZ
was drawn based on the active power and reactive powers of the
load. Fig. 20 presents the NDZ of all three interfaces on a axis reference. Theoretically, there is only one load resistance
for which islanding will not be detected as given in (1). Thus,

ZEINELDIN et al.: IMPACT OF DG INTERFACE CONTROL ON ISLANDING DETECTION

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TABLE I
SUMMARY OF SIMULATION RESULTS

Fig. 20.

NDZ for the three interface controls.

for a small amount of active power mismatch, the frequency

will deviate and an islanding condition could be detected. On
the contrary, since the interface is capable of supplying reactive
power, the load reactive power could be as large as the maximum
amount of reactive power the DG is capable of supplying. For a
small amount of active power mismatch, the frequency will deviate but will reach its threshold value in a large amount of time.
Thus, the NDZ for the three interfaces was calculated based on
the specified voltage and frequency limits and maximum trip
times specified in [10].
V. DISCUSSION
Prior to concluding the results presented in this paper, the
scope of this study must be reclarified. The paper studies the
impact of DG interface control on islanding detection in general and on the NDZ of the OVP/UVP and OFP/UFP. The study
does not include the impact of interface control on active islanding detection methods and other passive islanding detection
methods. The paper outlines certain types of interface controls
and not all for brevity purposes. The purpose of the presented
islanding detection methods is to highlight the effect of the interface control on the choice of an islanding detection method and
not to enhance the performance of currently proposed islanding
detection methods in previous work. Furthermore, for constant
current and - controlled inverters capable of injecting reactive power, islanding detection becomes much more complicated since there will be no reactive power mismatch during an
islanding condition that will lead to a frequency deviation. This

could have an impact on islanding detection methods that depend on reactive power mismatch and frequency deviation. Several issues, which require further investigation:
1) effect of interface control on other islanding detection
methods.
2) impact of reactive power injection on NDZ and islanding
detection methods dependent on reactive power variation.
A summary of the simulations results is given in Table I.

VI. CONCLUSION
This paper studied the impact of DG interface control on islanding detection and NDZ of OVP/UVP and OFP/UFP. Constant current, constant - , and constant - interface controls were analyzed and the following conclusions were drawn.

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 21, NO. 3, JULY 2006

1) Each interface responds differently to an islanding situation. Thus, an islanding detection algorithm can work efficiently for certain types of DG interface control and inefficiently for other types.
2) For DGs operating at unity power factor, constant current
controlled inverters are advantageous over constant controlled inverters due to their small NDZ.
3) The derived NDZ for OVP/UVP and OFP/UFP are more
accurate and provide better representation of the NDZ.
4) For DGs capable of supplying reactive power, as in the
case of the constant - controlled DG, the NDZ cannot
be represented on a
curve. In this case, the NDZ
is better represented on a - curve.
5) Detecting an islanding situation for constant - controlled interfaces is easier than the other interfaces presented in this paper.
6) Instead of designing a sophisticated islanding detection
algorithm to decrease the NDZ, implementing a suitable
control strategy that inherently has a small NDZ can significantly reduce the complexity of the islanding detection
algorithm.
The results and conclusions prove that DG interface control
has an impact on islanding detection and NDZ.

TABLE II
SYSTEM PARAMETERS

and
are the nominal and resonance frequency.
where
and are the load inductance and capacitance. The values of reactive power mismatch for a frequency threshold ranging from
59.3 Hz to 60.5 are 5.1 and 3.074 KVAR, respectively. The results determined in (13) provide accurate results as compared
with the results presented in [20].

APPENDIX
B. Constant
A. Constant Current Controlled DGs
In order to determine the amount of mismatch for which
the OVP/UVP and OFP/UFP will fail to detect islanding, the
amount of active power mismatch in terms of load resistance
can be expressed as follows:
(9)
For a voltage ranging from 88% to 110%, the amount of
power mismatch calculated using (9) equals 12 kW and 10 kW
respectively. In [20], a mathematical formula for reactive power
mismatch was presented. Unfortunately the equation derived involved approximation. A simple and accurate derivation for determining the NDZ is presented. The load reactive power can be
expressed as follows:
(10)
Since the DG is operated at unity power factor, the amount of
reactive power mismatch is equal to the load reactive power and
can be expressed as follows:
(11)
The resonance frequency can be expressed in terms of the
nominal frequency and the frequency variation as follows:
(12)
and (11) can be written in terms of the frequency variation as
follows:
(13)

Controlled DGs

Similarly, an equation for the active power mismatch was derived in [20]. A simple derivation is presented and provides the
same results presented in [20]. Since the active power output of
the DG is constant, the value of load resistance that will produce a sufficient change in voltage that could be detected by
the islanding protection can be calculated from the following
expression:
(14)
(15)
represents the value of load resistance that absorbs
where
the rated DG active power.
represents the value of load re.
sistance that will cause a deviation in voltage equal to
The active power mismatch in this case is the difference beand
and can be extween the active power absorbed by
pressed as follows:
(16)
For a voltage ranging from 88% to 110%, the amount of power
mismatch calculated using (16) equals 29.3 kW and 17.3 kW,
respectively. Similarly, the amount of reactive power mismatch
can be calculated from (13). The system, controller and load
parameters are given in Table II.
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H. H. Zeineldin (M05) received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering from Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt, in 1999 and 2002, respectively. He
is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering at
the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada.
His interests include protective relay coordination and distributed generators.

Ehab F. El-Saadany (SM05) was born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1964. He received

the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering from Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt, in 1986 and 1990, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada, in
1998.
Currently, he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo. His research interests are distribution system control and operation, power quality, power electronics, digital
signal processing (DSP) applications to power systems, and mechatronics.

M. M. A. Salama (F02) received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical

engineering from Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt, in 1971 and 1973, respectively,
and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Waterloo,
Waterloo, ON, Canada, in 1977.
Currently, he is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, University of Waterloo. His interests include the operation and
control of distribution systems, cables, insulation systems, power-quality monitoring and mitigation, and electromagnetics. He has consulted widely with government agencies and the electrical industry. He is a registered Professional Engineer in the Province of Ontario.