Technical Feasibility Analysis of Intentional Islanding for a Real Industrial Plant with Distributed Cogeneration: A Case Study on Dynamic Aspects

In Brazil, industrial plants with cogeneration units are encouraged to sell surplus energy to distribution utilities to guarantee revenue stream for their business. However, failures in the distribution networks and even on the transmission side can cause power outages to industrial plants that are not designed for intentional islanded operation. Since industrial consumers are prone to huge financial losses from power outages, intentional islanding is an attractive procedure to improve the reliability of power supply at these consumers. This paper presents an intentional islanding technical feasibility study on a real industrial plant with two MW-scale distributed cogeneration units, located in Pará State, Brazil. The study evaluates the dynamic performance of industrial plant islanded operation arising from intentional islanding, regarding the ability to survival the island formation and to safe reconnection to the utility grid. The simulation results show that the intentional islanding implementation in the industrial plant is technically feasible.