Bus Protection Application Challenges

JC (Jacobus) Theron K.N. Dinesh Babu Lubomir Sevov

GE Energy Connections Megger GE Energy Connections
650 Markland Street 211 Crystal Paradise Mall 650 Markland Street
Markham, ON L6C0M1 Off Veera Desai Road Markham, ON L6C0M1
Canada Andheri (W),Mumbai - 400 053 Canada
India

New power systems and substations are often designed to

Abstract – Bus protection is one of most challenging satisfy economic requirements rather than to keep protection
applications because it requires highest degree of schemes simple. At the distribution level, the addition of new
security and dependability. Unforeseen during power generation such as distributed energy resources (DER)
engineering and not detected during commissioning complicates historically simple busbar arrangements and
potential problems can cause a blackout in the large exposes existing CTs to saturation due to increased fault
geographical area. current levels which becomes bi-directional. This results in
This paper will discuss several common problems and complex busbar arrangements. In transmission networks,
solutions for the low impedance bus differential quite often, the protection zones are required to adjust their
protection to increase security and dependability for this boundaries based on changing busbar configuration, (such as
protection. Specifically, paper will focus on the following: the double-bus single breaker arrangements in Figure 1). This
 Increasing security by using supervising elements, requires the switching of secondary CT currents in high
such as external check zone or undervoltage. impedance schemes, however is easier and safer done in low
impedance IED schemes in software. Bus protection hence
 Detection of open CT at any feeder, connected to the has to evolve in more demanding bus configurations and
bus-possible solutions will be presented. applications.
 Monitoring isolators positions to ensure
including/excluding in the zone without causing any
potential misoperation.
 Ability to detect external fault and prevent bus
differential misoperation when fault occurs on the
feeder with a low CT ratio and feeder CT will saturate
extremely fast.
 Experience with engineering of the bus protection for
the configurable buses with several zones.
 End Fault protection to cover blind spots.

Paper will be illustrated with real life examples of the Figure 1. Double Bus Single Breaker
application challenges and how these challenges can be
addressed. With a low impedance bus differential protection in the
digital relays, able to adapt to a re-configurable buses and
Index Terms — Bus bar protection, CT Trouble, Bay able to provide additional means to achieve security and
identification, Intelligent electronic device (IED), Centralized dependability in bus differential protection applications it is
bus bar, CT secondary Open, blind spot, breaker failure, possible.
Bypass isolator, elimination of transfer bus, end fault, bus
unification, directional principle, zones of protection, breaker II. APPLICATION CHALLENGES
re-trip, under voltage security
A. INCREASE SECURITY WITH SUPERVISING ELEMENTS
I. INTRODUCTION
The low impedance bus protection IEDs on the market
Power systems used to have simple busbars with dedicated today have multiple additional security features to secure the
current transformers (CTs) and unidirectional current flow Bus Protection (87B) from unwanted operations during
during load and fault conditions. These buses traditionally external faults or switching conditions; such as CT saturation
were protected by the high-impedance principle – a fast and detection, directional (phase) comparison and bus zone
reliable scheme with decades of dependable and secure field breaker/isolator monitoring. However, these security means
experience. are still may not be enough for high-end transmission bus
protection applications.
 No matter how reliable or how high the mean time between
failures (MTBF) of IEDs is, they are electronic devices which
can fail, and the MTBF can never be high enough on high-end
bus protection applications due to the severe impact of any
incorrect operations.

Some contingencies that existing 87B are not always

secured against are:
 CT problems and AC wiring problems
 Malfunctioning of the auxiliary 52/89 contacts for
breakers and isolators
 DC wiring problems, involving the dynamic bus
replica on reconfigurable busses

For these reasons, additional supervisory elements are

recommended to enhance the security of the bus protection.

1. External Check Zone

The principle of the external check zone is to:

 Develop an independent copy of the differential
current for the entire bus, regardless of the position
of the primary switching devices, defining dynamic
zones for each bus section
 Use this check zone to supervise the tripping of all Figure 2. External Overcurrent Check Zone
bus zone(-s)
 Use independent CTs/CT cores if possible, to
guard against CT or wiring problems Advantage of this method is simplicity and ease of
 Use independent IED current inputs to guard implementation, but disadvantage is that all CTs have to be
against relay internal processing failures same ratio and type.
 Early alarm on spurious differential
Using external check zone guards against contingencies b. External IED Check Zone
listed above and Failure of IED current inputs
An external IED check zone can be configured as an
The external check zone can utilize simply an overcurrent equivalent bus differential zone, or as a larger zone
element, or a complete separate bus differential zone which overlapping multiple zones utilizing an external IED using
can supervise one or more bus differential zones: separate CTs or CT cores as follows:

a. Overcurrent Check Zone

In this case, the external check zone can be configured as

an unrestrained zone using separate CTs or CT cores. As
an example, an Instantaneous Overcurrent (phase or
ground) element can be configured to operate based on the
externally summated currents, preferably in a separate IED,
however all CTs to be summed up, must be of the same
ratio and type.

The overcurrent can then supervise the bus differential as

shown below.

Figure 3. External IED Check Zone

 In this case, the B-phase IED supervises the A-phase IED,
C-phase supervises B-phase and A-phase supervises C- These security features prevent the IEDs from unexpected
phase. The fail-safe/critical fail output is used to ensure operation during CT failure [3]; however exact identification of
scheme operation in the event that one IED is out of the faulted CT is equally important, as a secondary open CT
service. may result in a hazardous overvoltages which may lead to
blasting of the CT, thereby creating danger to life and
Advantage of this method of external check zone has a damaging switchyard equipment.
strong 2-out-of-2 security, preventing undesired operation in
the case of the single CT or IED input failure, but To prevent such occurrences, the concept of symmetrical
disadvantage is that each IED requires large number of CT components can be used to detect a faulty CT or its circuit. If
inputs in each phase IED. a CT/circuit becomes faulty, an unbalance current will be
measured by the IED, which results in the negative sequence
c. Undervoltage Supervision current in that particular bay which in turn will be utilized by the
IED to annunciate or trip the faulted bay. Such concept
Undervoltage Supervision consisting of 3 undervoltage cannot be always implemented in centralized bus bar
elements per phase (eg AG, AB and CA to supervise A- protection, as this architecture dictates the concept of phase
phase differential), can be configured as an external check segregated protection.
zone, supervising the bus differential on a per-phase basis.
This Undervoltage can be set high (0.85 – 0.90pu) to allow To adhere to this concept, in some busbar architectures
high speed operation, and would still allow alarming of each phase will be connected to a separate IED, thus the
spurious differential operation that could occur due to CT calculation of symmetrical component is defeated, without
problems, AC wiring problems, current input failures, which the above solution cannot be employed. Hence the
breaker or isolators auxiliary contact or DC wiring problems. necessity for alternate solution is required, which should be
capable of addressing other challenges thrown by dynamic
Voltage measurements should preferably be in a different bus replica. Such a solution is shown in Figure 5 Figure
IED, i.e. B-phase IED supervises the A-phase IED, C-phase 1below where the combination of circuit breaker close
supervises B-phase and A-phase supervises C-phase. position, CT trouble differential measurement and the current
Similar to the External Bus Check Zone, this scheme would supervision feature are utilized to identify the faulty bay.
also utilize the fail-safe/critical fail output to ensure scheme
operation in the event that one IED is out of service.

Figure 5. CT identification logic

The solution presented above has been engineered in a

centralized low impedance IED and implemented in 220kV
Bus (double bus arrangement) and 400kV Bus (1½ breaker
arrangement) at Tamil Nadu Electricity Board 400/230kV
Karamadai Sub Station located in Tamil Nadu, India.

C. MONITORING ISOLATOR POSITIONS

In many cases a feeder or line need to be transferred from

one bus to another bus for maintenance and serviceability.
The reconfiguration of the bus [6] such as the one shown in
Figure 6 is performed by switching on/off the disconnect
switches (isolators) connecting the primary circuit to one of the
Figure 4. Undervoltage supervision two buses.

B. OPEN CT DETECTION
Bus bar protection purely depends on CTs and failure of its
circuit or IED itself would challenge the security of the
protection. Such challenges are addressed by modern
numerical IEDs, where several protection elements for
additional security are embedded.
 BUS 1
Another advantage of using dual isolator auxiliary contacts
+
BUS PROTECTION RELAY
status is ability to monitor disagreement between 89a and 89b
ISO1
7B 7A 7A On
7B Off
ISO 1 CLOSED INCLUDE CURRENT C1
INTO ZONE1(BUS1)
contacts for alarm purposes and also to define an action in
ISO 2 OPEN
DO NOT INCLUDE C1
INTO ZONE 2 (BUS2)
case of such disagreement.
DO NOT EXECUTE THE
+ ISO 3 OPEN LOGIC FOR BREAKER
ISO2 BYPASSED IN THE
9B 9A 9A Off
9B On
RELAY
D. DETECTION OF EXTERNAL FAULTS
BUS 2 Some bus protection configurations are facing with the
+
challenge that some outgoing feeders would have lower CT
ISO3
5B 5A 5A Off ratios compared to power supply feeders, hence would be
5B On
CB 1
TRIP CB1, IF FAULT ON BUS 1
exposed to severe and fast CT saturation conditions [5] during
DO NOT TRIP CB1, IF FAULT ON BUS 2
external faults on these outgoing feeders, as highlighted
CT1
INCLUDE CURRENT C1 INTO ZONE1(BUS1)
DO NOT INCLUDE C1 INTO ZONE 2 (BUS2)
below:

C1 ~ ~
Figure 6. Isolator status and relay currents
Power supply
Switching of the isolators follows a certain procedure to feeders
3000/5
assure the power supply of the primary circuit is not disrupted. F1
To reflect the new position of the circuit, the relay monitors a
pair of auxiliary contacts associated with each isolator. One
normally open 89a and one normally closed 89b auxiliary
contact are connected to the relay, such that when 89a 600/5
I2 I1
contact is detected open and 89b contact is detected closed,
the isolator status is detected open. When the status of these F2
contacts is reverted, the isolator is detected closed.
Load or small generation feeders
Depending on the status of the main isolator, the relay
either includes (isolator closed) the circuit current from the bus Figure 8. Fast CT Saturation on outgoing feeder
zone, or excludes (isolator open) it from that zone. To avoid
differential protection tripping, the inclusion and exclusion of In this example, the problem is that the fault current I2 on
the circuit current in and out the zone must follow very the outgoing feeder, which occurs when a power supply
accurately the moment of closing and opening of the main feeders would feed fault F2, is much larger than fault current
isolator. I1 for a fault at F1 on the bus through the same outgoing
feeder.
Figure 7 shows how the time of open and close state for
each auxiliary contact from the pair of contacts need to be The outgoing feeders CTs are typically sized for line load
adjusted and assure the current of the circuit will be included and not for the system fault conditions, hence significant CT
in the differential protection zone exactly at the moment of saturation may occur on the outgoing feeder.
closing of the isolator, and will be excluded exactly at the
moment of isolator opening state. In simple terms, the relay The low impedance bus differential element would expect
must detect isolator closed from the pair of contacts before the the differential-vs-restraining currents trajectory to move from
moment of actual isolator closing, and must not show open t0 to t1 and then to t2 as below:
before the actual isolator knifes departed open.

SWITCHING SEQUENCE OF A DISCONNECTOR SWITCH

OPEN DISCONNECTOR CLOSED

FINAL POSITION FINAL POSITION
OPEN CLOSE
IN BETWEEN
DISCONNECTOR OPENED
CLOSED

DISCONNECTOR SWITCH MAIN

CONTACT

DISCONNECTOR SWITCH POSITION

AUXILIARY CONTACT 89b (CLOSE)

ISOLATING MARGIN

AUXILIARY CONTACT 89a (OPEN)

Figure 7. Auxiliary contacts and Isolator status Figure 9. CT Saturation Detection on External Faults
 In some cases the CT saturation might be in less than
2.5ms at 50Hz as shown below:

Figure 11. Fast OC Magnitude Estimator

This new overcurrent element can thus easily be used to

supervise the bus differential on external faults since the
required pickup setting will be significantly above load current
levels. Such approach also helps with a CT selection for the
outgoing feeders without any impact to feeder protection
sensitivity.
Figure 10. Extremely saturated CT secondary waveform

E. ENGINEERING EXPERIENCE OF COMPLEX BUS

This CT saturation is too fast to guarantee secure CT PROTECTION SCHEMES
saturation detection in most low impedance bus protection
In some power stations, by the use of special operational
IEDs that uses trajectory of differential element to detect CT
procedures; any two or more of the main bus bars is utilized
saturation.
as a transfer bus bar to facilitate maintenance of circuit
breakers and current transformers (in each section) without
In general the recommendation would be to change the CT
shutting down the bay(s) [2]. Owing to this fact, the
ratio, however in the high voltage substation this is not always
complications in operational philosophy have thrown
economical and feasible. Also increasing CT ratio will impact
challenges for the bus bar protection implementation.
sesntivity for the outgoing feeder protection.
The bus topology allows will be designed such that any one
Typically, the internal fault current supplied by these feeders
of the main busses available in the station to be used as an
with low CT ratios, would be much less than the external bus
auxiliary bus. In such systems, pre-defined precautions and
fault currents. Hence, a very fast current magnitude detection,
procedures are made as guidelines, which are followed before
faster than the bus differential protection, be required to
assigning any bus as an auxiliary bus. The procedure
secure differential element. Conventional overcurrent functions
involves, shifting of links, changing rotary switches, insertion of
utilize discrete Fourier transformation (DFT) that converts
test block and so on thereby causing unreliable operation.
sinusoidal waveforms to phasor to allow calculation of the
This kind of unreliable operations or inadvertent procedural
RMS magnitude, which is typically used as parameter to
lapse may result in a load disconnection from the grid due to
determine a high current. The operating time of this algorithm
unpredictable operation of bus bar protection relay which is a
with a non-saturated waveform is in the order of 16ms at 3-
frequently occurring phenomenon.
times Pickup at 60Hz, which is much slower than the
differential algorithm.
With the sophisticated configuration and implementation,
the cumbersome procedures are totally eliminated and the
A better approach is to use a time domain sample-based
operator is free to choose the transfer arrangement without
overcurrent algorithm that can react much quicker on the order
compromising the protection need of a bus differential system
of 3 to 5 ms.
for a reliable operation. This paper deals with the security
logics for such special scenarios, implemented in bus bar
Below is a comparison between the traditional full cycle
protection relay to ensure system stability and eliminate all the
Fourier and the Fast OC Magnitude algorithm performance
special operational precautions / procedure.
during severe CT saturation occurring in 2.7ms: (Blue
represents CT secondary current, Green is full cycle Fourier
In addition to these scenarios, it’s been a custom to provide
and Red is the Fast Magnitude sample-based overcurrent
current transformers on either side of bus section and bus
algorithm)
coupler to eliminate blind spots. Sophisticated logics have
been implemented with single current transformers, to
eliminate blind spot resulting in huge cost savings and switch
yard spacing, to facilitate space for additional bay. These
complications are well addressed by IED working on a low
impedance principle with the internal logic capability. Such
complications along with suitable logics were engineered and
implemented in Sharavathy 1035 MW Hydroelectric
generation station located near Jog falls, Karnataka, India.
 F. END FAULT PROTECTION SCHEMES configurations can be covered allowing for bidirectional;
current flow on all feeders.
In typical bus protection scheme arrangements, an over-trip
spot between the circuit breaker (CB) and current transformer As busbar schemes keep on changing based on application
(CT) develops when the CB is opened of a bus feeder. In this needs, the bus protection must follow these new requirements
scenario, currents measured by the CT, must be removed and still deliver very dependable and secure protection under
from the bus differential calculation to ensure a secure all circumstances including load and abnormal load conditions,
differential zone, which means the zone contracts to end at the internal and external faults.
open CD and excludes to portion between the CB and CT, as
seen below: This paper covered 6 applications where traditional bus
protection schemes fell short and highlighted advancements
and changes needed to ensure additional new requirements
on the bus protection are met.

IV. REFERENCES
[1] K.N. Dinesh Babu, P.K.Gargava, M.V.Gopalan,
Veera Vijayan and M. Ada Jinu P Josephmiak, "A Novel Bus
Protection for Complicated Bus Arrangements without using
isolator status wiring", International Conference on Advances
in Power System Control, Operation and Management
Figure 12. Eliminating over-trip when CB opened (APSCOM), November 2015.
[2] K.N. Dinesh Babu, Veera Vijayan, M.V.Gopalan,
This spot is thus a blind spot not covered by the differential, Bala Vinayagam,Appanna, Raghu and Jorge Cardenas,
since tripping the differential zone with the bus feeder CB "Adaptation of Bus Bar Protection of GE for Complicated Bus
already open, will not clear the fault. Arrangements in Sharavathy Generation Station, Karnataka
Power Corporation Limited ", PAC World Glasgow Scotland
Conference, June/July 2015.
[3] K.N. Dinesh Babu, A.B. Sudarshan and Jorge
Cardenas, "CT Open Bay Detection logic in Centralised low
Impedance bus bar protection IED ", Conference/Jourbal
TNEB BB, November 2015.
[4] B90 Low Impedance Bus Differential System Manual,
GE Publication GEK-119611A.
[5] Bogdan Kasztenny , Jeff Mazereeuw, Kent Jones:
Figure 13. End Fault Protection “CT Saturation in Industrial Applications – Analysis and
Application Guidelines”. GE Multilin GET 8501
The protection function needed to clear this type of fault is
so-called End Fault Protection [4]. [6] Lubomir Sevov, Bogdan Kasztenny, Ed Taylor:
Commissioning and Testing Complex Busbar Protection
End fault protection consists of an instantaneous Schemes – Experience at Pacific Gas&Electric”, WPRC,
overcurrent, enabled only if the CB is open, has a pickup delay October 2006
of at least 1.3 cycles to allow for adequate current ramp down
after the CB opened, and must be blocked by the manual V. AUTHORS INFORMATION
close command.
JC (Jacobus) Theron is Snr Product Manager for Grid
Typically end fault protection would send a transfer trip to Automation division of GE Digital Energy. He received the
the remote end of the bus feeder or power system component degree of Electrical and Electronic Engineer from the
it is covering. University of Johannesburg, South Africa in 1991. Mr. Theron
has 24 years of engineering experience; 6 years with Eskom
Most modern low impedance bus protection IEDs do include (South Africa) as Protection / Control and Metering Engineer,
end fault protection and typically one per bus zone feeder. 11 years with GE Multilin (Canada) as Product / Technical
support / Protective Relaying Consultant/Protection and
Systems Engineer leading the Project and Consulting
III. CONCLUSIONS
Engineering team and as Product Manager, 2 years with
As power systems have evolved, their associated busbar Alstom T&D (USA) as Senior Systems Engineer and 5 years
schemes have become much larger and more complex. with Hydro One as Operations Assessment Engineer / P&C
Reconfigurable buses are essential, and low impedance bus Technical Services Manager. He specializes in transmission,
protection schemes have had to evolve to ensure all bus distribution, bus and rotating machines protection applications
support, system designs and transient system testing. He is a
member of IEEE.
 Lubomir Sevov (M’90) received his M.Sc. degree from
Technical University of Sofia, Bulgaria in 1990. After
graduation, he worked as a protection and control engineer for
National Electric Company (NEC) Bulgaria. Mr. Sevov joined
GE Multilin in 1998, where he currently works as a senior
application engineer in the research and development team. In
the last eight years, Mr. Sevov has been mainly involved in the
design and application of industrial protective relays and
controls. He authored and presented more than 60 papers at
various protective relay conferences. His areas of interests
include feeder, bus and transformer protection, control,
monitoring, and diagnostic.
Lubomir is a registered professional engineer in the province
of Ontario, Canada. He is a senior member of IEEE, and chair
of the PSRC K1 working group developing a Guide for the
Application of Protective Relaying for Phase-Shifting
Transformers.

K N Dinesh Babu is a professional power system protection

engineer in India with extensive experience in HV / EHV sub
stations and industries. His work background includes
experience in working for Alstom, ABB, GE and Megger in
various roles like testing; commissioning; design and
application engineering. A major portion of this experience has
been in the area of protective relaying with a major focus on the
application and coordination of protective facilities on electrical
power systems. His experience includes the development of
protection philosophies, implementation of new technologies in
the field; control logic requirements for protective systems;
development of specifications for protective relay settings; and
analysis of disturbances and faults in electric power systems.
He also provides training to protection / field / O&M engineers
on IEDs, SCADA, power system protection and
synchrophasors for major utilities and industries in India and
Abroad. He holds a doctorate in electrical engineering and is a
DFSS certified six sigma green belt. He is a senior member of
IEEE and member of Cigre. His areas of contribution are
electric traction, power system protection and renewable
energy utilization and have published several articles in
international journals and conferences.