Anti-Islanding Performance Analysis of Multiple PV Micro-Inverter Operations

ABSTRACT

The islanding phenomenon of a distributed resource (DR), like a photovoltaic (PV) system or an energy storage system (ESS), is one of the major issues about the increased DR in distributed power networks because it causes a safety hazard to a power system's service personnel and the related power facility by unexpected powering. To prevent islanding, many anti-islanding methods have been developed and evaluated by the international and domestic grid-interconnection standards, but they have mostly focused on a single DR unit. Until now, evaluating the anti-islanding function for multiple DRs connected to the same power grid has received little attention. The rapid deployment of the PV micro-inverter in recent years has substantially increased the likelihood and concerns associated with islanding, especially with multiple operations in the same grid. This paper presents an anti-islanding performance analysis of multiple PV micro-inverter operations. Various islanding cases for multiple PV micro-inverter systems are evaluated based on the existing standard with the appropriate modification.

KEYWORDS:

• Anti-islanding
• Grid connection
• Islanding detection method
• Islanding phenomenon
• Multiple operations
• PV generation
• PV micro-inverter

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIP) [grant number 2016R1C1B1007001].

Notes on contributors

Byunggyu Yu

Byung-Gyu Yu was born in Korea, in 1976. He received the BS and MS degrees in electrical engineering from Pusan University, Korea, in 2000 and from KAIST in 2002, respectively. Since 2002, he had been with the Korea Institute of Energy Research as a Research Fellow. In 2007, he started his RONPAKU doctoral degree program supported by a scholarship from the government of Japan at the Tokyo Polytechnic University, and he received the PhD degree in electrical engineering in 2010. Since 2012, he has been with Kongju National University as an assistant professor. His research interests include photovoltaic system including the module-integrated converter system and its control algorithm.

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