ENWL013 - Detection of Islands

An island on the electricity network refers to a part of the network which continues to be supplied by a high voltage customer generator when surrounding parts of the network are off supply. The combination of altering settings or controls on generators to allow them to remain connected for smaller system disturbances and the increase in demand and associated demand side response contracts will potentially lead to an increase in the risk of a generator supporting an islanded network on the local distribution system. The problem is how to reliably and economically detect when an island has formed and to determine what steps are then appropriate to take once an island has been detected. 

The project will investigate the use of SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) and ADMS (Automatic Device Model Synthesizer) functionality to detect and then fragment islands formed on the distribution network. 

Timescales: January 2016 – June 2019.

Project documents