An Island Threshold Setting Technique using Branch Current from PMU of a Hybrid Distribution System

The number of different forms of renewable energy sources is increasing in the existing network which leads to more complexity in island detection. However, in the island detection technique, island threshold placement is an important part as wrong threshold placement can create a hazardous situation in the power system. There is an existing research gap on island threshold setting during the event of the island and non-island events occurring at the same time in the network. Therefore, this paper focuses on this existing gap and proposes a new island threshold setting technique using branch current data of a 16-bus hybrid distribution system (synchronous generator, PV, wind, energy storage, and hydroelectric plant). This paper considers five different islanding scenarios where three are utility islanding including critical power imbalance conditions and the remaining scenarios are island and non-island incepted at the same time in the utility grid. The proposed hybrid distribution model has been designed and simulated in the PowerWorld simulator and MATLAB/Simulink. Results showed that the proposed island threshold setting technique can determine the threshold value for different islanding cases when island and non-island occur at the same time. In addition, the results also demonstrate that the branch current of the conventional source branch can have the highest impact during islanding cases in the hybrid system.