Electric Power Systems Research 110 (2014) 180187

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Electric Power Systems Research

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/epsr

A new passive islanding detection method and its performance

evaluation for multi-DG systems
A.H. Mohammadzadeh Niaki , S. Afsharnia
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran 14395-515, Iran

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 12 September 2013
Received in revised form 14 January 2014
Accepted 20 January 2014
Available online 17 February 2014
Keywords:
Distributed generation
Islanding detection
Empirical mode decomposition
Intrinsic mode function
Multi-DG system

a b s t r a c t
This paper presents a passive islanding detection method for inverter-based distributed generation based
on empirical mode decomposition (EMD) technique. The voltage of point of common coupling (PCC) is
measured and its intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) are obtained using EMD. The rst IMF component of
PCC per unit voltage is the parameter used for islanding detection. Performance of the proposed method
is evaluated for single-DG and multi-DG cases. Simulation results performed in MATLAB/SIMULINK environment show that the islanding can be detected in less than two cycles, even for zero power mismatch.
Moreover, the proposed method functions properly for various congurations of multi-DG systems, DGs
switching events, various loadings of DGs and different DG interface controls.
2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Environmental pollution of fossil fuels caused an increased
application and penetration of distributed generation (DG) systems
using renewable energy sources. Integration of these DGs to distribution network has remarkable advantages, including increased
reliability and reduced line losses. On the other hand, some problems and concerns may be generated. One of the most critical
concerns is islanding detection. Islanding is a condition in which a
portion of the distribution network comprising local loads and one
or more DGs remains energized while isolated from the rest of the
system. Islanding detection is one of the mandatory requirements
for DGs, specied in the IEEE Std. 929-2000 and IEEE Std. 15472003 [1,2]. Based on these standards, an unintentional island shall
be detected within 2 s and the related DGs shall be isolated from
the distribution system. Therefore, a fast and accurate islanding
detection method is essential.
Islanding detection techniques are classied in two categories:
remote and local techniques. Remote methods are based on the
communication between utilities and DGs. In contrast, local methods use measured data at the DG site. Remote techniques are more
reliable than local ones, but their implementation is more expensive. So, local methods are widely used for islanding detection. They
can be categorized into passive, active and hybrid methods.

Corresponding author. Tel.: +98 9111009150.

E-mail addresses: a.mohammadzadeh@ece.ut.ac.ir
(A.H. Mohammadzadeh Niaki), safshar@ut.ac.ir (S. Afsharnia).
0378-7796/$ see front matter 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.epsr.2014.01.016

In passive techniques, system parameters like voltage, frequency, etc. are continuously monitored and compared with a
predetermined threshold. Active methods intentionally inject disturbances into the system. Hybrid methods are a combination of
passive and active methods. A comprehensive survey on islanding
detection methods is presented in [36].
Active methods have relatively smaller non-detection zone
(NDZ) than passive methods. But they degrade the power quality
due to the perturbations introduced to the system. Since the passive methods are usually simple and easy to implement and do not
introduce any disturbance, applying a passive method with small
NDZ is preferred to an active method.
Time-frequency transform-based passive anti-islanding techniques have been recently proposed. Wavelet transform and
S-transform have been presented for islanding detection in [712].
These transforms are applied on PCC voltage and current signals to
get useful information and calculate suitable parameters, e.g. high
frequency components and spectral energy of the signal.
Wavelet transform is basically a time-scale analysis, not a real
time-frequency analysis. One of the problems of the wavelet analysis is its non-adaptive nature. Once the mother wavelet is selected,
it cannot be changed during the analysis and have to be used to
analyze all the data. Moreover, spectral wavelet analysis underlies an uncertainty principle, indicating that a time or frequency
dependent information cannot be classied by the same accuracy,
simultaneously.
The S-transform is a combination of the short time Fourier transform (STFT) and the wavelet transform by changing the shape of
the S-transform wavelet. Although the S-transform can perform

A.H. Mohammadzadeh Niaki, S. Afsharnia / Electric Power Systems Research 110 (2014) 180187

multi-resolution analysis and retain the frequency information, one

cannot expect the predetermined Gaussian window to t all signals. Moreover, it is more time consuming compared with other
time-frequency based methods.
In this paper, an islanding detection technique based on the
empirical mode decomposition (EMD) method is presented. EMD
is a key part of the HilbertHuang Transform (HHT), which is a
powerful tool for analyzing linear, non-linear, stationary and nonstationary signals. Unlike the above mentioned transforms, the HHT
is an adaptive way to produce physically meaningful representation
of data. The superiority of this method to wavelet transform, STFT
and S-transform has been presented in the literature [1316].
The majority of passive islanding detection methods are unable
to detect islanding when the power mismatch in islanded system is
close to zero [1720]. Consequently they have large NDZ and are not
suitable for islanding detection in multi-DG systems, accordingly.
Recently, some passive methods which perform at small power
mismatch have been presented [912,2123]. But some of them
have not been evaluated in multi-DG systems [9,21,22]. The proposed passive EMD-based method in this paper can detect islanding
even when the generation and load exactly match (zero power mismatch) and thus its NDZ is zero. It functions properly in multi-DG
systems, as well. Compared with other time-frequency based techniques, the proposed method is very simple, straightforward and
easy to implement and has a small computation time. Extensive
simulations are performed in single-DG and multi-DG systems with
several case studies and the performance of the proposed technique
is investigated. The detection time of the method and the required
data window is also specied.
The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 describes the EMD
method and the approach to obtain the IMF components of a signal.
The studied system and its parameters are presented in Section
3. The details of the proposed method are described in Section 4.
Sections 5 and 6 present the simulation results and performance
evaluation of the proposed technique in single-DG and multi-DG
systems, respectively. Finally, conclusions are given in Section 7.
2. Empirical mode decomposition
The concept of the empirical mode decomposition method is to
identify the intrinsic oscillatory modes by their characteristic time
scales in the data and then decompose the data accordingly. This
method is also called the sifting process. EMD is used to decompose
the signal into a nite and often small number of intrinsic mode
functions. An IMF is a function that satises two conditions: (a)
in the whole data set, the number of extrema and the number of
zero crossings must either equal or differ at most by one; and (b)
at any point, the mean value of the envelope dened by the local
maxima and the envelope dened by the local minima is zero. The
name intrinsic mode function is adopted because it represents the
oscillation mode embedded in the data. Since the decomposition
is based on the local characteristic time scale of the signal, it is
applicable to nonlinear and non-stationary data [13].
Given a signal X(t), the algorithm of EMD can be summarized as
follows:
1) Identify local maxima and minima of signal X(t).
2) Perform cubic spline interpolation between the maxima and the
minima to obtain the envelopes emax (t) and emin (t), respectively.
3) Compute mean of the envelopes, m(t) = (emax (t) + emin (t))/2.
4) Extract h1 (t) = X(t) m(t).
5) If h1 (t) is not an IMF (based on above denition), then repeat
steps 14 on h1 (t) instead of X(t) until the new h1 (t) satises the
conditions of an IMF. The resultant IMF is called c1 (t).
6) Compute the residue, r1 (t) = X(t) c1 (t).

181

Fig. 1. The signal given in (3) and its IMF components.

7) The sifting process can be stopped either when the component

c1 (t) or the residue r1 (t) becomes so small that it is less than
the predetermined value of substantial consequence, or when
the residue r1 (t) becomes a monotonic function from which no
more IMF can be extracted. Otherwise, repeat steps 16 on r1 (t)
to obtain the next IMF and a new residue.
Huang et al. determined a criterion for the sifting process to
stop. This can be accomplished by limiting the size of the standard
deviation, SD, computed from the two consecutive sifting results
as:
SD =


 
T
h1(k1) (t) h1k (t)2

t=0

h21(k1) (t)

(1)

where, T is the time interval in which EMD method is applied. A

typical value for SD can be set between 0.2 and 0.3 [13].
If c1 (t), c2 (t),. . .,cn (t) are the IMF components and rn (t) is the
residue extracted by EMD method, the original signal can be reconstructed as:
X(t) =

n


ci (t) + rn (t)

(2)

i=1

To see how the EMD works, signal X(t) is considered as follows:

X(t) = 20t + 2 sin (40t) + sin (160t)

(3)

The original signal and its IMFs obtained from EMD method are
shown in Fig. 1. Based on this gure, EMD decomposes the signal with different time scales into its components effectively. This
example simply shows the performance of the EMD method to
extract different modes of the signal and the validity of results.
3. The studied system
The sample system shown in Fig. 2 has been considered to
describe the proposed method and evaluate its performance. The
system consists of an inverter-based DG, a three phase RLC load and
the grid, which all connect to the PCC. The DG unit comprises a DC

182

A.H. Mohammadzadeh Niaki, S. Afsharnia / Electric Power Systems Research 110 (2014) 180187

Fig. 2. System under study.

voltage source (Vdc ), a current controlled voltage source inverter

(VSI) with Hysteresis control and a series lter (Lf ). The quality factor, Qf , and resonant frequency, f0 , of the RLC load are equal to 2.5
and 60 Hz, respectively. The studied system has been modeled in
MATLAB/SIMULINK software environment. The islanding is simulated with opening the grid breaker. The system parameters and
their values are given in Table 1.
4. Proposed islanding detection method
The details of the proposed technique, i.e. the concept, selecting appropriate window, detection time, etc. are presented in this
section.
4.1. Concept of the proposed method
When DG operates in grid-connected mode, the PCC voltage is
maintained by the network. After the grid disconnects and islanding occurs, the support of the network will be lost and thus, the
PCC voltage will be affected and its components will be changed
considerably.
On the other hand, it was shown in Section 2 that EMD can
extract different modes of the signal with different time scales.
Any signal, including non-linear and non-stationary signals, can
be decomposed into its components by EMD technique. Therefore,
the proposed islanding detection method is based on extracting the
components of the PCC voltage and detection of changes in these
components. For this purpose, time domain voltage is measured at
the PCC and its IMF components are obtained using EMD method.
PCC per unit voltage, based on network rated voltage, is used in
the proposed method to be applicable to all systems with different
voltage levels. Figs. 3 and 4 show the PCC per unit voltage and
its IMFs in non-islanding and islanding conditions for system
described in Section 3, respectively. The residue, rn , has not been
shown in these gures, for brevity; because it represents the trend
of the signal and does not contain any useful information. The
islanding is simulated by grid breaker disconnection at t = 0.07 s.
It can be seen from Figs. 3 and 4 that once the islanding occurs,
the high frequency components of voltage and consequently, the
value of rst IMF, c1 , increases signicantly. So the value of the

Fig. 3. IMF components of PCC per unit voltage for non-islanding condition.

Fig. 4. IMF components of PCC per unit voltage for islanding condition.

rst IMF component of PCC per unit voltage is the parameter used
for islanding detection in the proposed method. For simplicity,
the rst IMF of PCC per unit voltage is called IMF1 hereinafter. It
should be noted that only the rst IMF is required for islanding

Table 1
Parameters of the studied system.
Grid parameters

Value

Load parameters

Value

DG parameters

Value

Lineline voltage
Nominal frequency
Rg
Lg

480 V
60 Hz
0.015 
0.2 mH

R
L
C
Qf
f0

4.608 
4.89 mH
1439.1 F
2.5
60 Hz

Rated power
Terminal voltage
Vdc
Lf

50 kW
480 V
900 V
2.5 mH

A.H. Mohammadzadeh Niaki, S. Afsharnia / Electric Power Systems Research 110 (2014) 180187

183

Fig. 5. Variations of IMF1 after islanding occurrence: (a) one-cycle window and (b)
two-cycle window.

detection. After nding the IMF1, it is not required to continue the

sifting process and calculate the higher order IMF components.
4.2. Determining the suitable window
EMD needs a set of data to obtain the IMF1. Since the proposed
method shall be suitable for on-line islanding detection, the appropriate window for EMD technique shall be determined. For this
purpose, numerous simulations have been performed for a variety
of windows. Only the results for one-cycle and two-cycle window
cases are presented in Fig. 5(a) and (b) for brevity. These gures
show the variations of IMF1 after islanding occurrence (t = 0.07 s).
It is worth noting that the meaning of an N-cycle window is that
at the end of each cycle, the last N cycle data is utilized for EMD.
The results for all windows are similar. Therefore, one-cycle data
window is sufcient for the proposed method to detect islanding.
Fig. 6. IMF1 for different active power mismatches (Q = 0).

4.3. Detection time

The proposed method works with one-cycle data, i.e. the data
used to nd the IMF1 is updated each cycle. For most cases, if the
DG is islanded at any instant of a cycle, it will be detected at the end
of that cycle. But in some cases, e.g. when the islanding occurs near
the end of a cycle, the islanding may be detected in the next cycle. It
is worth noting that due to the advent of powerful and high speed
digital signal processors (DSPs), the computation time required to
obtain the IMF1 is very small. Consequently, the detection time
of the proposed method is less than two cycles, considering the
instance of the islanding occurrence in a cycle and the required
computation time. The Simulation results presented in the paper
conrm this claim.
It should be mentioned that the IMFs shown in Figs. 35 are
related to phase A of PCC voltage. The results for phases B and
C are similar to phase A and are not shown for brevity. Consequently, only phase A of PCC per unit voltage is used for islanding
detection. This leads to increasing the fastness of the method even
more.
In summary, the proposed islanding detection method works as
follows: One cycle data of phase A of PCC per unit voltage is collected at the end of each cycle. First IMF component of the signal is
extracted using EMD technique. An islanding will be detected, if the
absolute value of this IMF is greater than a predetermined threshold. The proposed method is very simple, straightforward and easy
to implement. There is no complexity in the algorithm and consequently, no problem in its implementation on an experimental
set-up.
5. Performance of the proposed method for single-DG
system
Single-DG system shown in Fig. 2 is tested for a variety of conditions to prove the effectiveness of the proposed method. Extensive
simulations have been done and various cases have been considered: islanding condition, different active and reactive power

mismatches, load imbalance, induction motor starting, switching

of non-linear load, transient voltage dip, UL1741 Std. test conditions [24], load switching event and the effect of load quality
factor and load resonant frequency. Moreover, the sensitivity of
the proposed method to noise has been investigated (e.g. for 20 dB
signal-to-noise ratio). The proposed method functions properly in
all mentioned cases and is completely robust against noise. For
brevity, only the results for islanding condition and the effect of
active and reactive power mismatches on the proposed method in
case of single-DG system will be presented. The threshold value is
set to 0.01 based on simulation results.
5.1. Islanding
As stated in Section 4.1, the islanding condition is simulated by
opening the grid breaker at t = 0.07 s. Simulation result for this case
was previously shown in Fig. 4. Since the value of IMF1 (c1 ) is greater
than the threshold, islanding will be detected in one cycle.
5.2. Active and reactive power mismatch
The sensitivity of the proposed method to the values of active
and reactive power mismatch has been investigated. Power mismatch is dened as the difference between the power supplied by
DG unit and the power consumed by load. For system shown in
Fig. 2, power mismatch is the power supplied/consumed by the grid
(positive/negative power mismatch). The DG output power can be
set by adjusting the magnitude and phase of reference currents in
hysteresis control to obtain the required power mismatch.
Simulations have been carried out for a wide range of active
and reactive power mismatches. Fig. 6 shows the effect of active
power mismatches on the proposed method, while the reactive
power mismatch is set to 0%. Similarly, Fig. 7 represents the effect
of reactive power mismatches, with the active power mismatch
xed at 0%. Islanding takes place at t = 0.07 s. The values of active

184

A.H. Mohammadzadeh Niaki, S. Afsharnia / Electric Power Systems Research 110 (2014) 180187

Fig. 8. Detection time of proposed method for various power mismatches.

For this purpose, islanding is applied at different instances, i.e. start

of cycle, end of cycle and different instances within a cycle. Maximum detection time is obtained for each active and reactive power
mismatch case. The result is shown in Fig. 8. Based on this gure,
the islanding is detected for most cases in one cycle (16.67 ms for
60 Hz system) and for other cases in two cycles (33.33 ms for 60 Hz
system), which both are considerably below the required detection
time specied in standards [1,2]. Accordingly, the proposed method
has zero NDZ.
6. Performance of the proposed method for multi-DG
system

Fig. 7. IMF1 for different reactive power mismatches (P = 0).

and reactive power mismatches are specied in percent with

respect to the load rated active power and the load rated inductive reactive power (balanced condition), respectively [24]. It is
assumed that the DG maximum output power is equal to the load
rated active power and consequently, negative values of active
power mismatches are not shown in Fig. 6. However, both positive
and negative mismatches are considered for reactive power. The
simulation results show that the proposed method can effectively
detect islanding in all cases, even for zero active and reactive power
mismatches. This is the main advantage of the proposed passive
islanding detection method compared to other passive methods.
5.3. NDZ of the proposed method
Detection time of the proposed method is investigated for various active and reactive power mismatches (refer to Section 5.2).

In this section, performance of the proposed method is evaluated for multi-DG systems. Without loss of generality, the results
will be presented in case of two-DG system, which can be generalized to multi-DG systems. For this purpose, sample system shown
in Fig. 9 is considered, in which each DG consists of a DC voltage
source, a VSI unit and a lter. The parameters of DG unit I, RLC
load and grid are given in Table 1. Rating of DG unit II is different
from that of DG unit I and is considered as 100 kW. Both DG units
are equipped with the proposed islanding detection method. The
threshold value is set to 0.01 for each DG unit. The line resistance
and inductance (Rline and Lline ) is 0.02  and 0.3 mH, respectively.
Various scenarios are implemented. First, two different congurations of DGs are considered: connecting to the same PCC (two
parallel-DG system) or connecting to separated PCCs (double-DG
system) [25]. Then, islanding detection performance of one DG is
veried in case of switching the other DG. The proposed method
is then tested under different loadings of DGs. Finally, the effect of
DG interface control is investigated. It should be mentioned that
for all following scenarios, the output power of DG units are controlled in such a way that zero active and reactive power mismatch
is obtained in the islanded system. In other words, the sum of power

Fig. 9. Two-DG sample system.

A.H. Mohammadzadeh Niaki, S. Afsharnia / Electric Power Systems Research 110 (2014) 180187

Fig. 10. IMF1 for two parallel-DG system.

185

Fig. 12. IMF1 in DG switching event for two parallel-DG conguration.

Fig. 11. IMF1 in double-DG system for: (a) DG unit I and (b) DG unit II.

supplied by two DGs is equal to the power consumed by local load

and there is no power exchange with the grid.
6.1. Two parallel-DG system
In this scenario, the DG units are connected to one PCC. The
values of Rline and Lline in Fig. 9 are set to zero to obtain a two
parallel-DG conguration. The IMF1 variation of PCC per unit voltage is shown in Fig. 10. The system is islanded at t = 0.07 s. Since
both DG units connect to the same PCC, both islanding detection
algorithms have the same input data and thus, islanding detection
method of both DG units operate similarly. Fig. 10 clearly shows
that once the islanding happens, the value of IMF1 becomes greater
than the threshold and the proposed method effectively detects
islanding in one cycle.
6.2. Double-DG system
The DGs are connected to separated PCCs in this case, i.e. the
line resistance and inductance in Fig. 9 is not zero. So, the islanding
detection method of each DG uses its related PCC voltage to obtain
IMF1. The results are represented in Fig. 11(a) and (b). Fig. 11(a)
shows the variation of IMF1 for DG I and Fig. 11(b) shows that
for DG II. Islanding occurs at t = 0.07 s. These gures indicate that
the value of IMF1 calculated for both DG units is increased above
the threshold level after islanding. Therefore the proposed method
successfully detects islanding in double-DG system.
6.3. Effect of DG switching events
Islanding detection methods may malfunction in multi-DG systems, in case of one or more DGs switching in the system. The effect
of one DG switching on islanding detection of the other DG unit is
evaluated in this section.
Only two parallel-DG conguration is considered, for brevity.
Loading of both DGs are equal. DG unit II is switched off at t = 0.07 s
and is switched on at t = 0.1 s. IMF1 for DG unit I is shown in Fig. 12.
Based on this gure, the value of IMF1 is below the selected threshold and consequently, DG II switching events do not affect the
islanding detection method of DG I. Therefore, the proposed technique does not detect islanding during DG switching events and is
completely secure.

Fig. 13. IMF1 for positive active power loadings with zero reactive power loadings.

6.4. Effect of DG loading

DGs are usually designed to operate at unity power factor [26].
But in some cases, reactive power delivery/consumption by DG may
be required. Therefore loading of each DG should be considered
for two cases: active power loading and reactive power loading.
DG active power loading is dened as the ratio of active power
supplied/absorbed (positive/negative loading) by DG to the load
rated active power. DG reactive power loading is dened as the ratio
of reactive power supplied/absorbed (positive/negative loading) by
DG to the load rated inductive reactive power.
In Sections 6.16.3, equal loadings are considered for both DG
units, i.e. the active power loading of each DG is 50% with zero reactive power loading. In this section, the effectiveness of the proposed
method is tested under various loading conditions of two DGs. Only
the results for two parallel-DG conguration are presented. Results
for double-DG case are similar to two parallel-DG case and are not
presented for brevity.
Since the rating of DG unit II is greater than load rated active
power, negative values of active power loading are applicable. In
this regard, it is supposed that the DC link of DG unit I can store
energy and thus, the DG unit I can absorb power. Positive and
negative reactive power loadings are considered too.
Islanding occurs at t = 0.07 s. Figs. 13 and 14 show the results
for positive and negative active power loadings, respectively,
while zero reactive power loading is considered. Similarly, Fig. 15

186

A.H. Mohammadzadeh Niaki, S. Afsharnia / Electric Power Systems Research 110 (2014) 180187

Fig. 16. IMF1 for the case of different DG interface controls.

6.5. Effect of DG interface control

Fig. 14. IMF1 for negative active power loadings with zero reactive power loadings.

Current controlled voltage source inverters with Hysteresis control have been considered in Sections 6.16.4. In this section, the
effect of DG interface control on the proposed method is investigated. For this purpose, constant current controller with Hysteresis
control is considered for DG unit I, while the DG unit II is equipped
with a constant power controller. The interface control of DG unit II
is implemented in dq synchronous reference frame with two sets
of PI controllers and the active and reactive power references are
set to xed values [27].
Two parallel-DG conguration is considered. The active and
reactive power loading of each DG is set to 50% and 0%, respectively. The instance of islanding occurrence is t = 0.07 s. Variation
of IMF1 is shown in Fig. 16. Simulation results show that various
DG interface controls do not affect the proposed technique and the
method effectively detects islanding.
7. Conclusion
In this paper, a new passive islanding detection method with
zero NDZ is presented for inverter-based DGs. The EMD process
is applied to nd the rst IMF component of PCC per unit voltage, which is used for islanding detection. One-cycle data window
is used for this purpose. Measurement of one phase of PCC voltage is sufcient for the proposed technique. Simulation results
show that the method can effectively detect islanding in less
than two cycles, even for zero active and reactive power mismatch conditions. Moreover, the effectiveness and fastness of the
proposed method is proved in multi-DG systems for various congurations (two parallel-DG and double-DG), DGs switching events,
different loadings of DGs and various DG control techniques. The
proposed method is very simple, straightforward, robust against
noise and therefore suitable for on-line implementation in real
networks.
References

Fig. 15. IMF1 for various reactive power loadings with equal active power loadings
(50%).

represents the effect of reactive power loadings on the proposed

method, with the active power loading set to 50% for each DG. In
these gures, active and reactive power loadings are specied as
LP and LQ, respectively. The results show that the proposed
method functions properly for all active and reactive power
loading conditions.

[1] IEEE Recommended Practice for Utility Interface of Photovoltaic (PV) Systems,
IEEE Standard 929, 2000.
[2] IEEE Standard for Interconnecting Distributed Resources with Electric Power
Systems, IEEE Standard 1547TM , 2003.
[3] W. Bower, M. Ropp, Evaluation of Islanding Detection Methods for Photovoltaic
Utility-interactive Power Systems, International Energy Agency Implementing
Agreement Photovoltaic Power Systems, Paris, France, 2002, Technical Report
IEA-PVPS T5-09: 2002.
[4] A.M. Masoud, K.H. Ahmed, S.J. Finney, B.W. Williams, Harmonic distortionbased island detection technique for inverter-based distributed generation, IET
Renewable Power Generation 3 (4) (2009) 493507.
[5] D. Velasco, C.L. Trujillo, G. Garcera, E. Figueres, Review of anti-islanding techniques in distributed generators, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews
14 (6) (2010) 16081614.
[6] K.N.E.K. Ahmad, J. Selvaraj, N.A. Rahim, A review of the islanding detection
methods in grid-connected PV inverters, Renewable and Sustainable Energy
Reviews 21 (2013) 756766.
[7] C.T. Hsieh, J.M. Lin, S.J. Huang, Enhancement of islanding-detection of
distributed generation systems via wavelet transform-based approaches,

A.H. Mohammadzadeh Niaki, S. Afsharnia / Electric Power Systems Research 110 (2014) 180187

[8]

[9]

[10]

[11]

[12]

[13]

[14]

[15]

[16]

International Journal of Electrical Power and Energy Systems 30 (10) (2008)

575580.
S.R. Samantaray, A. Samui, B. Chitti Babu, Time-frequency transform-based
islanding detection in distributed generation, IET Renewable Power Generation
5 (6) (2011) 431438.
M. Hanif, M. Basu, K. Gaughan, Development of EN50438 compliant
wavelet-based islanding detection technique for three-phase static distributed generation systems, IET Renewable Power Generation 6 (4) (2012)
289301.
P.K. Ray, N. Kishor, S.R. Mohanty, Islanding and power quality disturbance
detection in grid-connected hybrid power system using wavelet and Stransform, IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid 3 (3) (2012) 10821094.
P.K. Dash, M. Padhee, T.K. Panigrahi, A hybrid time-frequency approach based
fuzzy logic system for power island detection in grid connected distributed
generation, International Journal of Electrical Power and Energy Systems 42
(1) (2012) 453464.
A. Samui, S.R. Samantaray, Wavelet singular entropy-based islanding detection
in distributed generation, IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery 28 (1) (2013)
411418.
N.E. Huang, Z. Shen, S.R. Long, M.C. Wu, H.H. Shih, Q. Zheng, N.C. Yen, C.C. Tung,
H.H. Liu, The empirical mode decomposition and the Hilbert spectrum for nonlinear and non-stationary time series analysis, in: Proceedings of the Royal
Society of London, 454, 1998, pp. 903995.
Z.K. Peng, P.W. Tse, F.L. Chu, A comparison study of improved HilbertHuang
transform and wavelet transform: Application to fault diagnosis for rolling
bearing, Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing 19 (5) (2005) 974988.
D. Donnelly, The fast Fourier and Hilbert-Huang transforms: a comparison,
International Journal of Computers, Communications & Control (4) (2006)
4552.
A.Y. Ayenu-Prah, N.O. Attoh-Okine, Comparative study of Hilbert-Huang transform, Fourier transform and wavelet transform in pavement prole analysis,
Vehicle System Dynamics: International Journal of Vehicle Mechanics and
Mobility 47 (4) (2009) 437456.

187

[17] M.A. Refern, O. Usta, G. Fielding, Protection against loss of utility grid supply for
a dispersed storage and generation unit, IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery
8 (3) (1993) 948954.
[18] S.-J. Huang, F.-S. Pai, A new approach to islanding detection of dispersed generators with self-commutated static power converters, IEEE Transactions on
Power Delivery 15 (2) (2000) 500507.
[19] C.G. Bright, COROCOF: comparison of rate of change of frequency protection: a
solution to the detection of loss of mains, in: Proceedings of the 7th IEE International Conference on Developments in Power System Protection, 2001, pp.
7073.
[20] W. Freitas, W. Xu, C.M. Affonso, Z. Huang, Comparative analysis between ROCOF
and vector surge relays for distributed generation applications, IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery 20 (2) (2005) 1315-1324.
[21] A. Pigazo, M. Liserre, R.A. Mastromauro, V.M. Moreno, A. DellAquila, Waveletbased islanding detection in grid-connected PV systems, IEEE Transactions on
Industrial Electronics 56 (11) (2009) 44454455.
[22] W.K.A. Najy, H.H. Zeineldin, A.H.K. Alaboudy, W.L. Woon, A Bayesian passive
islanding detection method for inverter-based distributed generation using
ESPRIT, IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery 26 (4) (2011) 26872696.
[23] A. Samui, S.R. Samantaray, Assessment of ROCPAD relay for islanding detection in distributed generation, IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid 2 (2) (2011)
391398.
[24] Underwriters Laboratories Inc, Inverters, Converters, and Controllers for Use in
Independent Power Systems, UL Standard 1741, 2001.
[25] B. Bahrani, H. Karimi, R. Iravani, Nondetection zone assessment of an active
islanding detection method and its experimental evaluation, IEEE Transactions
on Power Delivery 26 (2) (2011) 517525.
[26] H.H. Zeineldin, A Qf droop curve for facilitating islanding detection of inverterbased distributed generation, IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics 24 (3)
(2009) 665673.
[27] X. Wang, W. Freitas, W. Xu, V. Dinavahi, Impact of DG interface controls on
the Sandia frequency shift antiislanding method, IEEE Transactions on Energy
Conversion 22 (3) (2007) 792794.