A new passive islanding detection method and its performance evaluation for multi-DG systems

•A passive islanding detection method is presented for inverter-based DGs.•The proposed method has zero NDZ.•Islanding is detected in less than two cycles, even for zero power mismatch.•The method operates effectively in multi-DG systems for various conditions.

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 first 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 configurations of multi-DG systems, DGs switching events, various loadings of DGs and different DG interface controls.