Microgrid islanding detection based on mathematical morphology

Abstract

Voltage and frequency stability are highly important for reliable performance of smart grids. In grid-connected mode, the utility controls these parameters, but when islanding occurs these parameters exceed their limits, which may result in irreparable damage to the system. This paper presents a time-domain approach which uses basic mathematical morphology (MM) operators, dilation and erosion filters, for microgrid islanding detection. The proposed method applies a dilation-erosion differential filter (DED) of the RMS signal (DEDFOR) at the point of common coupling (PCC) in a micro-grid connected to distributed generations (DGs). To evaluate the performance of the proposed approach, it is tested and compared with existing techniques in the literature under various conditions such as capacitor bank switching and motor starting. The results verify the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed technique for islanding detection under different operating conditions and various power mismatches.