Active Frequency Drift Method for Islanding Detection Applied to Micro-inverter with Uncontrollable Reactive Power

This paper proposes active frequency drift (AFD) as an anti-islanding method applied to micro-inverters with uncontrollable reactive power. When using ordinary inverter topologies, such as full bridge inverters in photovoltaic systems, the islanding phenomenon can be detected with reactive power-based methods, such as reactive power variation. However, when the inverter topology cannot control the reactive power, conventional anti-islanding methods with reactive power cannot be utilized. In this work, the topology used in this paper cannot control the reactive power. Thus, an anti-islanding method that can be used in topologies that cannot control the reactive power is proposed. The conventional anti-islanding method of the topology that cannot control reactive power is introduced and analyzed. Unlike the conventional AFD method, the proposed method extends a zero current interval every predetermined cycle. The proposed method offers certain advantages over conventional AFD methods, such as total harmonic distortion. The proposed method is validated through simulation and experiment.