Prior to the installation of distributed generation in distribution networks, protection engineers must design and adjust efficiently protection systems to disconnect all distributed generators within acceptable time frame in case of islanding occurrences. Designing and evaluating reliable protection systems require numerous repeated dynamic simulations, which may be very time consuming. This paper aims to reduce the number of simulations necessary to design anti-islanding protection of distributed generators by proposing a set of formulas that determine directly the dynamic behavior of the most employed anti-islanding devices in synchronous-based distributed generation: frequency-based relays. Such formulas are derived from the solution of the synchronous machine and relays equations. Moreover, the detection time versus active power imbalance curves, known as performance curves, are employed to evaluate the accuracy level of these formulas. These curves are obtained by non-linear dynamic simulations as well as by the proposed formulas, thus a thorough comparison can be done. The frequency-based relays analyzed are: under and over-frequency relays, rate of change of frequency relays (ROCOF relays) and vector surge or vector jump relays (VS relays).
distributed generation; islanding detection; synchronous machines; protection
