Adaptive identification of critical nodes for fault‐on voltage support in islanded microgrids

Abstract The shedding of critical distributed energy resources during faults in an islanded microgrid may induce widespread voltage drops, potentially triggering a cascade of reactions leading to the collapse of the entire system. Accurately identifying critical nodes is the key technology to improve the resilience of microgrids. However, multi‐source coupling and the uncertainty in fault‐induced voltage sag can diminish the accuracy of node importance identification. To address this, this paper proposes an adaptive node identification method designed for quick and accurate identification of nodes that cope with various fault scenarios. This method introduces an index for evaluating voltage support capability based on the equivalent voltage drop range. This index adapts to fault uncertainty while integrating electrical parameters with spatial position. Furthermore, a higher‐order transition matrix reconstruction strategy with power propagation characteristics is proposed to reduce the higher‐order complexities arising from remote end faults' current flowing path length. Ultimately, the transition matrix is optimized by integrating it with the PageRank algorithm and highlighting the importance of source nodes. The proposed method is validated by numerical computation and time‐domain simulation results in a benchmark test microgrid, demonstrating its remarkable identification accuracy in a variety of fault scenarios.