INSTRUMENT TRANSFORMERS AND

POTENTIOMETERS
 CONSTRUCTION
Current Transformer is Instrument transformer
which is used for measure high current of
transmission line.
By using C.T. we can measure high current from
normal rating Ammeter(0-5 A).
C.T. have primary winding of few turns of thick
copper conductor which is connected to series with
heavy current carrying conductor.
The secondary winding is made of more number of
turns of thin copper conductor.
The secondary winding is connected to coil of
normal rating ammeter.
The following figure shows construction of C.T.
 WORKING

The following figure shows measurement of line current

The following figure shows measurement of line current
 CORE DESIGN

Amount of exciting current dawn by C.T. depends on

material of core and flux developed in it.
The appropriate current ma be obtained directly from
exciting characteristic of C.T. The general shape of
characteristic is as shown below.
The characteristic is divided into two region which are ANKLE

POINT and KNEE POINT.

The working current extends between this two region and

measuring current operates only in ANKLE POINT.

KNEE POINT is define as 10% increase in sec. voltage produces

50% increase in exciting current.

Beyond the KNEE POINT C.T. is said in ENTER region in this

major of primary current is utilize to maintain flux in core.

 TYPES OF CURRENT TRANSFORMERS

Types of C.T. is depends on current ratings as

following…
Secondary current rating:
Generally it should be 1 or 5 ampere. For following
reason it would be 2 ampere also…
⚫ Not possible to add or remove turn to adjust ratio of primary
and secondary.
⚫ Some times load is high so 5 A is very much current, then 2 A
is suitable.
⚫ Cost will increase as secondary turn will increase.
⚫ If some reason secondary is opened, very high voltage is
produced. It will damage the C.T. and also trouble for operator.
TYPES
VECTOR DIAGRAM
 POTENTIAL TRANSFORMERS

❑Potential transformer or voltage transformer gets used in electrical power

system for stepping down the system voltage to a safe value which can be fed to
low ratings meters and relays. Commercially available relays and meters used for
protection and metering, are designed for low voltage.

❑Primary of this transformer is connected across the phase and ground. Just like
the transformer used for stepping down purpose, potential transformer i.e. PT has
lower turns winding at its secondary. The system voltage is applied across the
terminals of primary winding of that transformer, and then proportionate
secondary voltage appears across the secondary terminals of the PT.
The secondary voltage of the PT is generally 110 V. In an ideal potential
transformer or voltage transformer, when rated burden gets connected across the
secondary; the ratio of primary and secondary voltages of transformer is equal to
the turns ratio and furthermore, the two terminal voltages are in precise phase opposite
to each other. But in actual transformer, there must be an error in the voltage ratio as
well as in the phase angle between primary and secondary voltages.
ERRORS
Is - Secondary current.
Es - Secondary induced emf.
Vs - Secondary terminal voltage.
Rs - Secondary winding resistance
Xs - Secondary winding reactance.
Ip - Primary current.
Ep - Primary induced emf.
Vp - Primary terminal voltage.
Rp - Primary winding resistance
Xp - Primary winding reactance.
KT - Turns ratio = Numbers of primary
turns/number of secondary turns.
I0 - Excitation current.
Im - Magnetizing component of I0.
Iw - Core loss component of I0.
Φm - Main flux.
β - Phase angle error.
❑ Voltage Error or Ratio Error in Potential
Transformer (PT) or Voltage Transformer (VT)
The difference between the ideal value Vp/KT and
actual value Vs is the voltage error or ratio error in a
potential transformer, it can be expressed as,

❑ Phase Error or Phase Angle Error in Potential or

Voltage Transformer
The angle ′β′ between the primary system voltage
Vp and the reversed secondary voltage vectors KT.Vs is
the phase error.
CAUSE OF ERRORS IN POTENTIAL TRANSFORMER

❑ The voltage applied to the primary of the potential transformer

first drops due to the internal impedance of the primary.

❑ Then it appears across the primary winding and then transformed

proportionally to its turns ratio, to the secondary winding.

❑ This transformed voltage across the secondary winding will

again drop due to the internal impedance of the secondary, before
appearing across burden terminals. This is the reason of errors
in potential transformer.
The ratio and phase angle error can be minimized by using following methods:
Reduction the core loss and magnetizing components of Io
The equations of ratio and phase angle errors show that the errors depend on the core
loss and magnetizing components of no load current Io. The following precautions are
taken to reduce Ic and Im,
1. Choosing low reluctance core.
2. Using material of high permability.
3. Providing smaller magnetic paths to the flux.
4. Using large cross section of the core.
5. Keeping flux density in the core to low value.
2. Reduction of resistance and leakage reactance
The errors depends on the voltage drops which are in turn depend on the values of
resistance and leakage reactance. The resistance can be reduced by increasing cross-section
of conductors and decreasing the length of the mean turn. The leakage reactances depend
on the leakage fluxes.
3. Providing turns compensation
Thus on no load, actual ratio exceeds by some factor. The remedy for this is to reduce the
primary turns or increasing the number of secondary turns. Thus for one particular value of
load, the actual ratio can be made equal to nominal ratio. This reduces the ratio error over
the entire range of the burden. This is called turns compensation. However, the turns
compensation does not affect the phase angle θ.
D.C.CROMPTON’S POTENTIOMETER
❑ The Potentiometer is an electric instrument that used to measure the EMF (electro
motive force) of a given cell, the internal resistance of a cell. And also it is used to
compare EMFs of different cells. It can also be used as a variable resistor in most of the
applications. These potentiometers are used in huge quantities in the manufacture of
electronics equipment that provides a way of adjusting electronic circuits so that the
correct outputs are obtained. Although their most obvious use must be for volume
controls on radios and other electronic equipment used for audio.

❑ When we use Voltmeter, current flows through the circuit and because of the internal
resistance of the cell, always terminal potential will be less than the actual cell potential.
In this circuit, when the potential difference is balanced (using a Galvanometer null
detection), no current flows in the circuit, so the terminal potential will be equal to the
actual cell potential. So we can understand that the Voltmeter measures the terminal
potential of a cell, but this measures actual cell potential.
 WORKING PRINCIPLE

Fig: schematic symbol

Fig :Construction of Potentiometer

The basic working principle of this is based on the fact that the fall of the
potential across any portion of the wire is directly proportional to the length
of the wire, provided wire has uniform cross-sectional area and the constant
current flowing through it.“When there is no potential difference between any
two nodes there is electric current will flow”.
Standardization of crompton D.C. potentiometer:
A practical form of D.C. potentiometer which is very widely used in crompton
potentiometer.
A standard westen cell is connected across terminals are standardization circuit the battery
whose e.m.f. is to be measured is connected across terminals E1 & E2 with regard to
polarity. T
The sliding contact E2 is set & the key ‘K’ is closed & null deflection is obtained by
adjusting resistances course & fine Rheostats. The change over switch position, if the
battery whose positions is to be measured to get balanced or null deflection.

Calibration of Voltmeter:
Voltmeter can be calibrated using DC potentiometer, any desired voltage with in the range
of the voltmeter to be calibrated can be obtained using the potential divdider. This voltage
is applied of the I/P terminal of Volt ratio box.
The voltmeter to be calibrated is connected across these terminals. The output voltage of
the V.R. box is measured accuratrely with a d.c. potentiometer.
Theoritical value = (value voltage knob + value of mr knob) x (m.f at V.R. box)
Actual value = set value
% E = (AV – TV / (TV) x 100
Unknown potential = (main dial volts) + (slide wire dial volts x 0.001)
 AC POTENTIOMETERS

The Potentiometer is an instrument which measures unknown

voltage by balancing it with a known voltage. The known source
may be DC or AC. The working phenomenon of DC potentiometer
and AC potentiometer is same. But there is one major difference
between their measurements, DC potentiometer only measures the
magnitude of the unknown voltage. Where as, AC potentiometer
measures both the magnitude and phase of unknown voltage by
comparing it with known reference. There are two types of AC
potentiometers
Polar type potentiometer.
Coordinate type potentiometer.
POLAR TYPE POTENTIOMETER
In such type of instruments, two separate scales are used to measure magnitude and phase
angle on some reference of the unknown e.m.f. There is a provision on the scale that it
could read phase angle up to 3600. It has electrodynamometer type ammeter along with DC
potentiometer and phase-shifting transformer which is operated by single phase supply.
❑ In phase-shifting transformer, there is a combination of two ring-shaped laminated
steel stators connected perpendicularly to each other as shown in the figure. One is
directly connected to power supply and the other one is connected in series with
variable resistance and capacitor. The function of the series components is to maintain
constant AC supply in the potentiometer by doing small adjustments in it. Between the
stators, there is laminated rotor having slots and winding which supplies voltage to the
slide-wire circuit of the potentiometer. When current start flowing from stators, the
rotating field is developed around the rotor and due to it e.m.f. is induced in the rotor
winding.

❑ The phase displacement of the rotor emf is equal to rotor movement angle from its
original position and it is related to stator supply voltage. The whole arrangement of
winding are done in such a way that the magnitude of the induced emf in the rotor may
change but it does not affect the phase angle and it can be read on the scale fixed on the
top of the instrument.
COORDINATE POTENTIOMETER
In coordinate AC potentiometer, two separate potentiometers are caged in one
circuit as shown in the figure. The first one is named as the in-phase potentiometer
which is used to measure the in-phase factor of an unknown e.m.f. and the other one is
named as quadrature potentiometer which measures quadrature part of the unknown
e.m.f. the sliding contact AA’ in the in-phase potentiometer and BB’ in quadrature
potentiometer are used for obtaining the desired current in the circuit.
By adjusting rheostat R and R’ and sliding contacts, the current in the quadrature potentiometer
becomes equal to the current in the in-phase potentiometer and a variable galvanometer shows the
null value. S1 and S2 are signs changing switches which are used to change the polarity of the test
voltage if it is required for balancing the potentiometer. There are two step-down transformers
T1 and T2 which isolate potentiometer from the line and give an earthed screens protection
between the winding. It also supplies 6 volts to potentiometers.

Now to measure unknown e.m.f. its terminals are connected across sliding contacts AA’ using
selector switch S3. By doing some adjustments in sliding contacts and rheostat, the whole circuit
gets balanced and galvanometer reads zero at the balanced condition. Now the in-phase
component VA of the unknown e.m.f. is obtained from the in-phase potentiometer and quadrature
component VB is obtained from quadrature potentiometer.
APPLICATIONS OF AC POTENTIOMETER

Measurement of self-inductance.
Calibration of voltmeter.
Calibration of Ammeter.
Calibration of watt meter.