Currently, for all grid-connected Solar PV inverters, for safe integration purposes utilities require that they have passive and active anti-islanding protection to ensure they do not inject into an uncontrolled island (a section of network not tied to the wider grid and controlled generation sources). This protection is particularly important to ensure maintenance personnel are not exposed to dangerous voltages if working on the islanded section of network.
The scope of this project is to analyse the reasonable range of scenarios and network configurations that could exist, and assess the likelihood that PV inverter anti-islanding detection could be defeated as a result of random variations in the instantaneous load and generation in an island that sustains a temporary energy balance that inverters falsely interpret as being grid tied.
Additionally, assess the likelihood that inverter anti-islanding protection could fail to operate correctly and continues to inject even when significant energy imbalance means that voltages are well outside normal range for passive anti-islanding detection; the residual level of voltage imposed on the network would need to be determined to assess whether there were then safety implications;
Possible extensions to scope could include:
· Also model future battery | PV combinations, and the reasonably plausible dispatch scenarios for such batteries.
· Possible future EV uptake, introducing larger, higher density energy sources, and thus higher likelihood of short term energy balance conditions being sustained.
Undergraduate
- Results from analysis (e.g. statistical analysis) of scenarios and network configurations.
- Results from analysing safety implications and recommendations
- Practical case studies, illustrating the above, either through hardware-setup or hardware-in-loop simulations in power system laboratory
None
Lab allocations have not been finalised