Islanding for Distributed Generation

Grid connection of many small-scale renewable energy resources, such as photovoltaics, requires an inverter. This inverter can be controlled in order to detect and thereby avoid islanding, or on the contrary to intentionally island the local electricity grid. The grid owner has no control over an islanded grid, which may be dangerous for repair personnel. Communication should therefore play a role in distributed generation (DG) in order to maintain control of an islanded part of the grid. The control method implemented in the 3.3 kW inverter presented here is intentional islanding when the communication is present, and non-islanding when the communication is down