INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON “CONTROL, AUTOMATION, COMMUNICATION AND ENERGY CONSERVATION -2009, 4th-6th June 2009

Coordination of Overcurrent Relays in

Distribution System using Linear Programming
Technique
Prashant P. Bedekar, Sudhir R. Bhide, and Vijay S. Kale

Abstract— A power system consists of many number of equipment. Much more number of circuit breakers and relays are required to
protect the system. The relays in the power system are to be coordinated properly so as to avoid mal-operation and hence to avoid the
unnecessary outage of healthy part of the system. The overcurrent relays are the major protection devices in a distribution system.
Overcurrent relay is usually employed as backup protection. But in some situations it may be the only protection provided. A relay must get
sufficient chance to protect the zone under its primary protection. Only if the primary protection does not clear the fault, the back-up
protection should initiate tripping, and therefore, overcurrent relay coordination in power distribution network is a major concern of
protection engineer. The overcurrent relay coordination in ring fed distribution networks is a highly constrained optimization problem. The
purpose is to find an optimum relay setting to minimize the time of interruption of the power supply and to avoid the mal-operation of
relays. This paper discusses linear programming technique for optimum coordination of overcurrent relays in a ring fed distribution system.

Index Terms— Linear programming Overcurrent relay coordination, simplex method.

—————————— ‹ ——————————

1 INTRODUCTION

T HE most obvious effect of a shunt fault is a sudden

built up of current. So it is natural that the magnitude
tude of current be utilised as positive indication of
rent flows in the specified tripping direction, they avoid
coordination with the relays behind them.
The directional OC relay coordination problem in distri-
existence of a fault. Therefore the over-current protection bution system can be defined as linear programming
is the most widely used form of protection [1-3]. Overcur- problem with constraints and can be solved using one of
rent (OC) relay is usually employed as backup protection. the linear programming techniques, namely, simplex, dual
But in some situations it may be the only protection pro- simplex, or two phase simplex technique.
vided.
A relay must get sufficient chance to protect the zone un-
der its primary protection. Only if the primary protection
2 COORDINATION OF DIRECTIONAL OC RELAYS IN
does not clear the fault, the back-up protection should in- RING FED SYSTEM
itiate tripping. A typical power system may consist of As soon as the fault takes place it is sensed by both prima-
hundreds of equipment and even more protection relays ry and backup protection. The primary protection is the
to protect the system. Each relay in the system needs to be first to operate as its operating time being less that that of
coordinated with the relay protecting the adjacent equip- the backup relay.
ment. If backup protections are not well coordinated, mal- A simple radial feeder with two sections is shown in fig
operation can occur and, therefore, OC relay coordination ure 1. For fault at point F, relay RB is first to operate. Let
is a major concern of power system protection [4,5]. Each the operating time of RB is set to 0.1 s. The relay RA should
protection relay in the power system needs to be coordi- wait for 0.1 s plus, a time equal to the operating time of
nated with the relays protecting the adjacent equipment. circuit breaker (CB) at bus B, plus the overshoot time of re-
The overall protection coordination is thus very compli- lay A [1]. This is necessary for maintaining the selectivity
cated of relays at A and B.
In a system where there is a source at more than one of the
line terminals, fault and load current can flow in either di- RA RB F
rection. Relays protecting the lines are, therefore, subject
to fault currents flowing in both the directions. If non di-
rectional OC relays were used in such system, they would
have to be coordinated with, not only the relays at the re- B
mote end of the line, but also with relays behind them. A
Since directional relays operate only when the fault cur-

————————————————
• Prashant P.Bedekar is with the Department of Electrical Engineering,
Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur (India) E-mail: Fig. 1 A radial feeder
[email protected]
• Sudhir R. Bhide is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Vis-
vesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur (India) E-mail: A ring main feeder system is shown in figure 2. It allows
[email protected] supply to be maintained to all the loads in spite of fault on
• Vijay S. Kale is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Visves- any section. Relays 1, and 8 are non directional whereas
varaya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur (India)
E-mail: [email protected] all other relays (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7) are directional OC re-
lays. All directional relays have their tripping direction
Manuscript received April 23, 2009. away from the concerned bus.
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 Bounds on the settings

8 1 TDSimin ≤ TDSi ≤ TDSimax …(3)

Timin ≤ Ti ≤ Timax …(4)
7 2 where TDSi is the time dial setting of relay Ri and Ti is the
operating time of relay Ri .

Relay characteristics

All relays are assumed to be identical and are assumed to

6 3 have normal IDMT characteristic as [7-11] :
Ti = (λ . TDSi) / [(I/Is)γ - 1] …(5)
5 4
where I is input current, and Is is setting current. For
normal IDMT relay γ is 0.02 and λ is 0.14. As the pickup
currents of the relays are pre determined from the system
requirements, equation (5) becomes
Fig. 2 A ring main feeder Ti = (αi . TDSi) …(6)
where α is λ / [(I/Is)γ - 1].
For coordination purpose relays 2,4,6, and 8 will form one Making substitution from equation (6) in equation (1),
group and relays 1,3,5, and 7 will form other group. For the objective function becomes
group one, setting is to be started from relay 2. The relay min ∑ (αi . TDSi) …(7)
operating times will be related as
TR8 > TR6 > TR4 > TR2 In this equation αI’s are known. Values of TDSi can be de-
For group two, setting is to started from relay 7. The relay termined by simplex method, which is one of the linear
operating times will be related as programming methods.
TR1 > TR3 > TR5 > TR7
The actual operating time for each relay can be decided
again considering the operating time of preceding relay,
4 THE SIMPLEX ALGORITHM
operating time CB associated with preceding relay, and The simplex method of Dantzig is a powerful scheme for
the overshoot time of the relay under consideration. obtaining a basic feasible solution; if the solution is not
As the size and complexity of the system goes on increas- optimal, the method provides for finding a neighboring
ing it becomes more and more difficult to coordinate the basic feasible solution that has a lower or equal value of
relays. Keeping the same concept of coordination (as ex- function [12]. The process is repeated until, in a finite
plained above) in view, the problem can be stated as op- number of steps, an optimum is found.
timization problem which can be solved by linear pro- The algorithm is given below [12,13] –
gramming technique. Step 1 : Obtain an initial basic feasible solution and form
first simplex table.
Step 2 : If all the cost coefficients are nonnegative, opti-
3 RELAY COORDINATION PROBLEM mum solution has been obtained, go to step 8 , otherwise
Directional OC relays have two types of settings : time di- go to step 3.
al setting (TDS) and pickup current setting (Ipu). Direction- Step 3 : The nonbasic variable with most negative cost
al OC relays allow for continuous time dial setting and coefficient is choosen to enter as a basic variable in the
discrete pickup current setting. If pickup currents are tak- next basic feasible solution.
en to be fixed, the problem becomes a linear programming Step 4 : Examine the ratio of constants (right hand side of
problem and is solved to calculate the optimal TDS of the constraints) to the corresponding coefficient of entering
relays [6]. variable in each equation. If at least one positive ratio ex-
The coordination of directional OC relays in a power sys- ists go to step 5, otherwise the objective function is un-
tem can be stated as follows [6-9] : bounded, so go to step 9.
min ∑ WiTik …(1) Step 5 : The current basic variable in the equation corres-
where Tik indicates the operation time of relay Ri for a fault ponding to the smallest nonnegative ratio from step 4 is
in zone k, and Wi is a coefficient and is usually set to 1 chosen as the variable to leave the set of basic variable in
[6,10]. Thus the coordination problem of directional OC the current basic feasible solution.
relays in interconnected power systems, can be stated as Element corresponding to entering variable column and
an optimization problem, where the sum of the operating leaving variable row is the pivot element.
times of the relays of the system is minimized, under the Step 6 : Form new simplex table. For this perform ele-
following constraints [7,8]: mentary transformations on rows such that the pivot
element (obtained in step 5) becomes 1, and the coeffi-
Coordination criteria cient of entering variable in other rows become zero.
Step 7 : With the new simplex table formed, go to step 2.
Tnk – Tik ≥ •T …(2) Step 8 : An optimal solution for the problem has been ob-
where Tnk is the operation time of the first backup of relay tained. Print the result and stop.
Ri for a given fault in zone k. •T is coordination time in- Step 9 : The objective function is unbounded, so stop.
terval which is necessary for maintaining the selectivity of
relays. It is taken to be 0.2 second.
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 3

Depending upon the location of fault, three configurations

are possible. Each configuration (corresponding to loca-
Since there are finite number of choosing m basic tion of fault) is shown in table 3.
variables out of n variables, the iterative process of the
simple algorithm will terminate in a finite number of Table 3 : Possible configurations (system II)
cycles.
Fault Primary Corresponding
Point Relay Backup Relay
5 RESULTS
A 3 --
MATLAB is a commonly used programming language 5 1 and 2
for computer modeling. Its code is relatively straight 6 4
forward. A program has been developed in MATLAB for B 1 --
optimization using simplex method. This program is 2 --
used to solve the coordination problem of directional 3 --
overcurrent relays. 6 4
The program is tested for various systems and it C 3 --
is found that it gives correct results. Two different sys- 4 --
tems are presented here for illustration. 5 1 and 2
A System I
The system shown in figure 2 is considered. As discussed The results show that for any configuration the
in section II, for coordination purpose relays 2,4,6, and 8 coordination obtained is correct.
will form one group and relays 1,3,5, and 7 will form
other group. The results obtained are shown in table 1.
6 CONCLUSION
Table 1 : Relay coordination results (system I) The overcurrent relays are the major protection devices in
a distribution system. The relays in the power system are
Relays TDS to be coordinated properly so as to provide primary as
2 and 7 0.04 well as back up protection, and at the same time avoid
4 and 5 0.15 mal-operation and hence avoid the unnecessary outage of
3 and 6 0.26 healthy part of the system.
1 and 8 0.39 The overcurrent relay coordination in ring fed distribution
networks is a highly constrained optimization problem.
It can be seen that the results obtained give proper coor- As the pickup currents of the relays are pre determined
dination for fault at any point in the system. from the system requirements, the optimization can be
B System II treated as linear program problem.
The second system under study is shown in figure 2. The In this paper simplex method is presented to solve the op-
results obtained are shown in table 2. timization problem. Two sample systems are considered
for illustration. It is shown that simplex method provides
an efficient tool to solve the coordination problem of di-
rectional overcurrent relays in ring fed distribution sys-
tem.

1 2 3 4 REFERENCES
[1] Paithankar Y. G., and Bhide S. R., “Fundamentals of Power
System Protection,” Prentice Hall of India Private Limited, New Delhi,
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[2] Badri Ram, and Vishwakarma D. N., “Power System Protec-
5 6 C
B tion and Switchgear,” Tata McGraw Hill Publishing Company Limited,
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[3] Mason C.R., “The Art and Science of Protective Relaying”,
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[5] So C.W., Lee K.K., Lai K.T., and Fung Y.K., “Application of
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Prashant P. Bedekar is currently persuing the Ph.D. degree in the

Department of Electrical Engineering, Visvesvaraya National Institute
of Technology, Nagpur, India. His research interests include power
system protection, optimization, and AI techniques.

Sudhir R. Bhide is an Assistane Professor in the Department of

Electrical Engineering, Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology,
Nagpur, India. He has authored a book on Fundamentals of Power
System Protection (Prentice Hall of India, 2007). His research inter-
ests and activities include power system protection, artificial intellig-
ance based systems, and optimization.

Vijay S. Kale is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Electrical Engi-

neering, Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur, India.
He is currently persuing the Ph.D. degree. His research interests and
activities include power system protection, artificial intelligance based
systems.

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