Voltage Sags/Swells Subsequent to Islanding
Transition of PV-Battery Microgrids
Pan Zhongmei, Hou Tonghui, Wang Yuqing
Electrical Engineering Department
Xi’an University of Technology
panpan@xaut.edu.cn
Abstract—This paper investigates the transient voltage
sags/swells subsequent to islanding of a PV-Battery microgrid.
For an unplanned islanding and micro-grid formation, during
islanding detection time, the microgrid is disconnected from
main grid while the control mode of the BESS stays the same as
before. Consequently the microgrid will undergo transient
voltage sag or swell caused by the mismatch of the source output
and the load power and the switch transients. The microgrid
studied includes a diesel synchronous generator, an inverter-
based PV system and an inverter-based battery storage system.
The PV system is operated in MPPT mode. And the battery
system is operated by a PQ controller in grid-connected mode
and by a V/f controller in islanded mode. Matlab/Simulink is
adopted to model the microgrid under study. The voltage
transients in several scenarios of the microgrid are simulated.
Keywords—microgrid; unplanned islanding; voltage sag/dip;
voltage swell; PQ control; V/f control
I. INTRODUCTION
With the development of distributed generation
technologies, microgrids are introduced. A microgrid is
technically a small scale power system capable of autonomous
operation when islanded from main grid. Islanding is
performed to disconnect the microgrid from a faulty
distribution network to safeguard the components of microgrid
from upstream disturbances and allow an uninterrupted supply
of loads. It is also performed to protect voltage sensitive loads
from significant voltage drops when a quick solution to main
grid voltage problems is not available[1].
A microgrid can operate under two different conditions[2]:
Ь Grid-connected Mode – the microgrid is connected to a
main grid being either partially supplied from it or injecting
some amount of power into it;
Ь Islanded Mode – the microgrid operates autonomously
when the disconnection from the upstream MV network occurs.
In grid-connected mode, the main grid serves as an infinite
bus with unlimited power supply or demand, enables
mitigating power mismatches in the microgrid by power
transfer from or to the main grid. When the microgrid is
connected to the distribution system, the controllable
distributed energy resources (DER) are usually controlled by a
constant power (PQ) controller. Once the microgrid is
disconnected from the main gird, at least one DER must serve
to keep the voltage and frequency right. The droop controller
or the V/f controller is employed to maintain the voltage and
Supported by Shaanxi Special Foundation of Provincial Key Discipline
978-1-4673-8644-9/16/$31.00 2016
c IEEE
frequency within the stand-alone microgrid. And single master
operation or multi master operation is applied according to one
or more DERs are operated to maintain the voltage and
frequency.
The microgrid islanding process may be an intentional
disconnection from the main grid for maintenance purpose[3]
or be an unscheduled disconnection due to either a fault and its
subsequent switching incidents or some other unexpected
switching process[4].
The transition of microgrid from grid-connected mode to
islanded mode has been discussed in [4]-[9]. The improvement
or modification of power management and control strategy for
smooth transition is discussed in[5]-[6]. In [7]-[8], small signal
dynamic model of a micro-grid with inverter based DG and
synchronous generator has been developed. In [4] the dynamic
performance of preplanned islanding and fault-triggered
islanding of a microgrid which includes a conventional rotating
synchronous machine and a inverter-based DG is investigated.
In [9], impacts of different control schemes of the inverter-
based DG and microgrid load types on the microgrid stability
subsequent to fault-forced islanding are investigated. Voltage
sags/swells can be observed moreorless from the voltage
waveform of above literatures but few investigations are
carried out.
This paper emphasizes the transient voltage sags/swells
during preplanned and unplanned islanding conditions of
microgrid. The microgrid includes three DGs: a diesel
synchronous generator, an inverter-based PV system and a
inverter-based battery storage system. Master-slave control
scheme is adopted with the storage system and diesel generator
operated to maintain the voltage and frequency. The PV system
is operated in MPPT mode. And the battery system is operated
by a PQ controller in grid-connected mode and by a V/f
controller in islanded mode. Matlab/Simulink is adopted to
model the microgrid under study. The voltage transients in
several scenarios of the microgrid are investigated.
The paper is organized as follows. In Section II, the
configure and control scheme of the studied microgrid system
is introduced. In Section III, the cause of voltage sags/swells
during microgrid islanding is analyzed. Section IV describes
the specifics of the Matlab/Simulink model of the study system.
In Section V the transient analysis of the mode transition is
conducted and results of the study are reported. Conclusions
are stated in Section VI.
2317
 II. MICROGRID CONFIGURATION AND CONTROL STRATEGY kiP
idref = (k pP + )( Pref − P)
s
A. Micro-grid configuration
kiQ
The micro-grid considered in this paper as shown in Fig.1 iqref = (k pQ + )(Qref − Q )
is a simple system with a battery energy storage system, a s (2)
diesel synchronous generator and a PV system. The load is The inverter output currents id and iq are compared with the
represented by a three-phase constant load with unity power references idref and iqref and regulated by a PI controller. To
factor. The PV system works in MPPT mode and the energy eliminate the interference of the coupling voltageɘ௣௟௟ ‫ܮ‬௦ ݅௤ and
storage serves to control voltage and frequency subsequent to
the output voltage vd, vq, the outputs of the current regulators
islanding. The synchronous generator is connected to the
vsd and vsq are obtained :
system after the micro-grid is islanded to maintain the voltage
and frequency. The micro-grid is connected to the utility grid at k ii
point of common coupling (PCC) bus. v sd = (k pi + )(idref − id ) − ω pll Ls iq + v d
s
k
v sq = (k pi + ii )(iqref − iq ) − ω pll Ls id + v q
s (3)
The control principle of V/f controller also consists of two
control loops. The current control loop is similar to the one of
PQ controller. The inner loop of the V/f controller is shown in
Fig. 4. In accordance with the setting reference of voltage and
frequency, the inverter terminal voltages are obtained by the
controller. idref and iqref are obtained from the V/f PI controller.

Fig. 1. Microgrid with multiple DERs.

B. Inverter Control Scheme of Battery Storage

The circuit diagram of the inverter-based battery energy
storage system is shown in Fig.2. There are three legs and L
filters in the ac side. The inverter of storage system needs to
switch its control strategies in response to the mode transition
of the micro-grid from PQ control strategy to V/f control
strategy.
(a) The PQ control loop

Fig. 2. Inverter topology

(b) The current control loop
The control principle of PQ controller is shown in Fig. 3. It
Fig. 3. Inverter PQ controller.
has a PQ regulate loop as shown in Fig.3(a) and an current
regulate loop as shown in Fig.3(b). The measured inverter
output voltage va, vb, vc and currents ia, ib, ic are transformed to
dq frame noted vd and vq, id and iq, respectively. The inverter
output active P and reactive power Q are calculated by:
P = v d id + v q i q
Q = v d id − v q i q
(1)
Fig. 4. The voltage control loop of V/f controller.
After compared with their references Pref and Qref, the
inverter dq reference currents idref and iqref are obtained through III. VOLTAGE SAGS/SWELLS
a PI controller: Voltage sags and swells are the most common types of
power-quality disturbances. Voltage sag is defined as a

2318 2016 IEEE 11th Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications (ICIEA)
decrease in the root-mean-square (rms) value of an ac voltage TABLE I. PV MODULE PARAMETERS
between 0.1 and 0.9 p.u. of the nominal voltage ae at the power
frequency for durations of 0.5 cycles to 1 min [10]. The IEC Parameters(Unit) Value
defines this phenomenon as voltage dip [11]. Voltage sags and
swells are characterized by their duration, magnitude and phase Open-circuit voltage Uoc(V) 880
angle shift. Each type of equipment in the customer’s facility Short-circuit current Isc(A) 68.9
has different sensitivity to voltage sag. Once the severity of
voltage sag exceeds its sensitivity threshold, the equipment Maximum Power Point voltage Um(V) 700
may malfunction, which may result in substantial financial
losses [12]. Maximum Power Point current Im(A) 63.7

Short circuits, starting large motors, sudden changes of

load, and energization of transformers are the main causes of TABLE II. INVERTER CONTROLLER AND FILTER PARAMETERS
voltage sags [13]. In this paper voltage sags during and
subsequent to the islanding of microgrid with PV and energy Parameters Value
storage are investigated.
L filter 8 mH
The equivalent circuit of the studied microgrid is shown in
Fig.(5). In grid-connected mode, the inverter-based micro- Kip 100
sources controlled by PQ controllers can be modeled as a PQ controller of battery
controlled current source. In islanded mode it can be modeled Kii 0.001
as a controlled voltage source. storage system and VdcQ
KPp,KQp 2
controller of PV system
KPi,KQi 1000

Kip 10

V/f controller of energy Kii 2000

storage Kup 2

Kui 1000
Fig. 5. Equivalent circuit of the studied microgrid.

In the grid-connected mode, the PCC switch S1 is close and
the option switch S2 is closed to 1. In the process of islanding
S1 is open at the time of disconnection from main grid noted as
t1 and S2 is switched to 2 at the time of control scheme
transition from PQ to V/f noted as t2. In the case of unplanned
islanding, during the period of t1 to t2, the unbalance of the
source power and the load requirement will cause voltage rise
or drop. And after t2, the switch of S2 which lead to the
parallel of two sources will introduce impulse in most cases.
That is to say, there will be voltage sags/swells at t1 and t2.
IV. STUDY SYSTEM MODEL
To investigate the transition transients of micro-grid, the
electromagnetic transients of the system are simulated in the
environment of Matlab/Simulink.
The component models used for the simulation are as
follows. The main grid is represented by a 380V three-phase
voltage source with the short-circuit capacity of 1000 MVA
and X/R ratio of 10. Load are modeled as constant power loads
with unity power factor. For the micro-grid under study, the
synchronous DG is simulated by the standard synchronous
machine model listed in the Matlab/SimPower library.
Machine parameters, the diesel engine governor model and the
excitation system are the same as that in [9].The model of PV
module for simulation is built using the method given in [14].
The parameters of PV panels are listed in Table 1. The
parameters of inverter topology and controller are listed in
Table 2.
V. STUDY CASES
Considering the diversity of microgrid operation
conditions, to be simplified, in the proposed microgrid system,
sufficient capacity should always be available, i.e. the load
requirement are assumed to be met by energy storage system in
a short term run and by diesel in a long term run. Besides, the
over/under voltage protection and over/under frequency
protection of DGs are not discussed nor considered in this
paper.
Several case studies are conducted to examine the system
voltage transients during the transition from grid-connected
mode to islanded mode. For every case, both preplanned and
unplanned islanding are simulated. For preplanned islanding,
the microgrid system shown in Fig. 1 is isolated from the main
grid without any fault or grid disturbances, at 0.24s by simply
opening CB1, with the control mode switched simultaneously.
Then, the behavior of the microgrid during unplanned islanding
is discussed. CB1 open at 0.16s and the control scheme
changes at 0.24s. And the synchronous generator is started at
0.4s. In this paper, the unplanned islanding is supposed to be
caused by protection subsequent to a short circuit fault of the
main grid near PCC or by other operations without short circuit
fault. Several scenarios with various sunshine intensity and
load power are investigated. The load varies from 13kW,
23kW, 33kW to 43kW; the sunshine intensity S varies from
100W/m2, 500W/m2 to 1000W/m2. The voltage waveform of
PCC bus of preplanned islanding, unplanned islanding without
ground fault are simulated and the results are presented. The

2016 IEEE 11th Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications (ICIEA) 2319
 voltage waveform of PCC bus of preplanned and unplanned
1.5
islanding are shown respectively in Fig.6-Fig.9. S=100W /m2
S=500W /m2
S=1000W /m2
1.5
S=100W /m2
S=500W /m2
S=1000W /m2 1

U (p.u.)
1
U (p.u.)

0.5

0.5

0
0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4 0.45 0.5
t(s)

0
0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4 0.45 0.5 (b) Unplanned islanding without ground fault.
t(s)
Fig.6. Voltage amplitude when load power is 23kW..
(a) Preplanned islanding.
1.5
S=100W /m2
1.5
S=500W /m2
S=100W /m2
S=1000W /m2
S=500W /m2
S=1000W /m2

1
U (p.u.)
U (p.u.)

0.5

0.5

0
0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4 0.45 0.5
0 t(s)
0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4 0.45 0.5
t(s)
(a) Preplanned islanding.
(b) Unplanned islanding without ground fault.
1.5
Fig.6. Voltage amplitude when load power is 13kW.
S=100W /m2
S=500W /m2
1.5 S=1000W /m2
S=100W /m2
S=500W /m2
S=1000W /m2 1
U (p.u.)

1
U (p.u.)

0.5

0.5

0
0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4 0.45 0.5
t(s)

0
0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4 0.45 0.5 (b) Unplanned islanding without ground fault.
t(s)
Fig.7. Voltage amplitude when load power is 33kW..
(a) Preplanned islanding.

2320 2016 IEEE 11th Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications (ICIEA)
 VI. CONCLUSIONS
1.5
S=100W /m2 The transient voltage sags/swells subsequent to unplanned
S=500W /m2 islanding of a PV-BESS microgrid are investigated based on
S=1000W /m2
the electromagnetic transient simulations of matlab/Simulink.
The cases under study illustrated that the severity of voltage
1 sags/swells is affected by the output of sources, the load
demand, the cause of islanding and the islanding detection time.
U (p.u.)

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