EE3304

Power Systems I

6.0 Basics of Power Systems Protection

Lecturer: Dilshani Maheepala

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Content

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Types of faults

6.3 Protection Systems

6.4 System Transducers

6.5 Over Current Protection

6.6 Types of Over current relays

6.7 Relay Co-ordination

6.8 Auto Re-closing

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6.1 Introduction

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 Power System Protection

What is meant by Power System Protection?

Preventing and mitigating the consequences of faults in a power system is called as

power system protection.

Why is it important?

1. For continuous and reliable operation of the power system.

2. To ensure the safety of equipments and personal.
3. Infeasibility to design a fault-free power system technically and economically.
4. Improve the power quality of the system.
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 Power System Protection

How to implement?
– Acquire data : By means of transducers, sensors
– Process the data
– Detect the fault
– Isolate the fault :

Fault??
Any abnormal behavior of a power system is called as a fault. Abnormality can occur
in
– Current
– Voltage
– Frequency
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6.2 Types of Faults

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Types of Faults

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Types of Faults
Faults can be classified in many different ways
1. According to fault arrangement
i. Shunt or Short circuit faults : Due to insulation failures
ii. Series or open circuit faults: Due to break in path of current
2. According to effect on different phases
i. Symmetric or balanced faults : affects each of the three phases equally
ii. Asymmetric or unbalanced faults : affects each of the three phases
differently
3. According to dependence on continuity of power flow
i. Transient faults : Disappear when power is disconnected for a short time
and restored
ii. Persistent faults : Doesn’t disappear after power is disconnected for a
while

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6.3 Protection Systems

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 Protection System and its Attributes
Protection systems usually comprise five components:

1. Current and Voltage transducers: To step down the high voltages and currents of the
electrical power system to convenient levels for the relays to deal with.

2. Protective relays: To sense the fault and initiate a trip signal

3. Circuit breakers : To open or close the system based on relay signal

4. Power Supply : To provide power in case of power disconnection in the system.

5. Communication channels: To allow analysis of current and voltage at remote

terminals of a line and to allow remote tripping of equipment.
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Protection System and its Attributes

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 Protection System and its Attributes

1. Sensitivity
The protective system must be alive to the presence of the smallest fault
parameter(current/voltage/frequency). The smaller the fault parameter it can detect, more
sensitive it is.

2. Selectivity
Relaying equipment must clearly discriminate between normal and abnormal system conditions, so
that it never operates unnecessarily.

3. Speed
Fault at any point in the system must be detected and isolated in the shortest possible time. This
time is in ms scale, depending upon the fault level of the section involved. How ever speed and
accuracy bear an inverse relationship.
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Protection System and its Attributes

4. Reliability
Relaying equipment must be found in healthy operating condition when called upon to act,
as years might elapse between two consecutive operations of relays. It’s found that
systems which depends on locally available information, tend to be more reliable than
those that depend upon the information at remote end. To increase the reliability we add
features like back-up protection.

5. Restoration
After once isolating the fault, protective system must try to reclose the breakers restoring
the system to its original configuration.

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6.4 System Transducers

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 Current Transformer (CT)
• The current transformer has two jobs
– Step down the current to such levels that it can be handled by
the relay coil. The standard secondary current ratings used in
practice are 5 A and 1 A. This frees the relay designer from the
actual value of primary current.
– Isolates the relay circuit from the high voltage system.

• There are two kinds of CTs

– Measurement CTs : Used in metering purposes. Designed in a way that, at a fault condition it
should saturate and save the instrument connected to its secondary from excessive current.
– Protective CTs : Used in protection systems. Designed in a way that, at a fault condition it
should produce the largest secondary current , which increase the speed of the protection
system.
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Current Transformer (CT)

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Current Transformer (CT)

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Current Transformer (CT)

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 Voltage or Potential Transformer (VT / PT)
• The voltage transformer steps down the high voltage of the line to a level safe enough for the
relaying system and personnel to handle
• A VT primary is connected in parallel at the point where measurement is desired unlike a CT
primary which is in series with the line.

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 Voltage or Potential Transformer (VT / PT)
• A Commonly used version of voltage transformer is capacitor voltage transformer (CVT) or
capacitance coupled voltage transformer (CCVT).
• In its most basic form the device consists of three parts: two capacitors across which the
transmission line signal is split, an inductive element to tune the device to the line frequency,
and a transformer to isolate and further step down the voltage for the instrumentation or
protective relay.
• In practice, capacitor C1 is often constructed as a stack of smaller capacitors connected in
series. This provides a large voltage drop across C1 and a relatively small voltage drop across
C2
• CVTs in combination with wave traps are used for filtering high frequency communication
signals from power frequency.

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Voltage or Potential Transformer (VT / PT)

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6.5 Over Current Protection

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 Over Current Protection

• In a power system more sever damages are caused by short circuit faults.
• When a short circuit fault occurs there is a sudden build up in the current.
• This significant rise in the current magnitude can be used to detect a short circuit
fault.
• Over current protection is carried out mainly in two ways
– Non directional over current protection: Depends only on current magnitude
– Directional over current protection: Depends both on current magnitude and
phase (current direction) at the relay location.

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 Fuse
• Oldest and simplest form of over current protection.
• Allows normal current to flow and melts itself out when the current exceeds a certain
magnitude for a certain amount of time

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 Thermal Relays
These are bimetallic type relays which works on the principle of strain generated due to
unequal linear expansion of two metals.
Relay sends a trip signal, when a fault current passes through generating enough heat
to operate the bi-metal.

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 Over Current Relays
• Has a single input in the form of ac current.
• The output of the relay is normally open contact, which changes over to closed state
when the relay trips
• The relay has two settings, which can be adjusted.
– Time setting
– Plug setting

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 Terms related to Relays

• Relay Time : It is the time between the instant of fault occurrence and the instant of
closure of relay contacts.
• Breaker Time : It is the time between the instant at circuit breaker operates and
opens the contacts, to the instant of extinguishing the arc completely.
• Fault Clearing Time : The total time required between the instant of fault and the
instant of final arc interruption in the circuit breaker is fault clearing time. It is sum of
the relay time and circuit breaker time.
• Pickup : A relay is said to be picked up when it moves from the 'OFF' position to 'ON'
position. Thus when relay operates it is said that relay has picked up.
• Pick-up current : It is the minimum current in the relay coil at which the relay starts to
operate breaker.

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 Terms related to Relays
• Current setting : It is often desirable to adjust the pickup current to any value. This is know as
current setting and is usually achieved by the use of tapping on the relay coil.
Pickup current = Rated secondary current of CT x Current setting

• Time-setting Multiplier : Similar to current setting, a relay is provided with a feature with
which its time of operation can be controlled. This feature is known as time-setting multiplier.
Its dial is calibrated from 0 to 1 in steps of 0.05 as shown in the figure.

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 Terms related to Relays
• Plug setting multiplayer (P.S.M) :It is the ratio of fault current in the relay coil to the pick up
current.

• Time/ P.S.M Curve :For a relay, a curve showing relation between time and plug-setting
multiplier is provided which is called time/P.S.M. curve. A typical curve for a relay is shown in
the Figure.

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 Exercise
Determine the time of operation of a 5 A over current relay having a current setting of 125%
and a time setting multiplier of 0.6 connected to supply circuit through a 400/5 current
transformer when the circuit carries a fault current of 4000 A. The time of operation for
different P.S.M. values are shown below.
Answer: 2.1s

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6.6 Types of Over Current Relays

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 Instantaneous Over Current Relays

As soon as the relay detects the fault, it trips. Although instantaneous means no internal
delay, it needs a certain minimum amount of time (few milliseconds) to operate.
Hence there is no time setting for these relays.

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 Definite Time Over Current Relays

This relay can be adjusted to issue a trip output at a definite amount of time, after it picks
up.
Hence both time settings and plug settings exist.

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 Inverse Time Over Current Relays
• Most commonly used type in the industry, where operating time has a inverse
relationship with the fault current.
• Naturally can be obtained by electromechanical relays.
• At present using micro-processor based relays, the time-current characteristics of these
relays have been standardized.
• Following equations are used to calculate operating times for different types of inverse
time OC relays

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Inverse Time Over Current Relays

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Exercise

Find the operating time for the relay in previous exercise for the same
fault current, if the relay is a
(i) Standard inverse type OC relay
(ii) Very inverse type OC relay
(iii) Extremely inverse type OC relay
(Answer: 1.978 s, 1.157 s, 0.762 s)

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6.7 Relay Coordination

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Relay Coordination

• In a protection system where series set of relays are used in different zones, each one
must isolate only the faulty section of the power system network, leaving the rest of
the system undisturbed.
• To achieve this, relay settings should be set accordingly which is called relay co-
ordination.
• Generally three methods are used to achieve correct relay co-ordination
– Discrimination by time
– Discrimination by current
– Discrimination by both time and current

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Discrimination by Time

• In this method, an appropriate time setting is given by using a time delay element to
each of the relays controlling the circuit breakers in the power system to ensure that
the breaker nearest to the fault opens first.
• The main disadvantage of this method of discrimination is that the longest fault
clearance time occurs for faults in the section closest to the power source, where the
fault level (MVA) is highest.
• For discrimination by time, (for same pickup current)

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Discrimination by Current

• Discrimination by current relies on the fact that the fault current varies with the
position of the fault because of the difference in impedance values between the
source and the fault.
• Hence, typically, the relays controlling the various circuit breakers are set to operate
at suitably taped values of current such that only the relay nearest to the fault trips
its breaker.
• For discrimination by current

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Discrimination by both Current & Time
• In the case of discrimination by time alone, the disadvantage is due to the fact that the more
severe faults are cleared in the longest operating time.

• Discrimination by current can only be applied where there is appreciable impedance

between the two circuit breakers concerned.

• It is because of the limitations imposed by the independent use of either time or current co-
ordination that the inverse time over current relay characteristic has evolved.

• With this characteristic, the time of operation is inversely proportional to the fault current
level and the actual characteristic is a function of both 'time' and 'current' settings

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6.8 Auto Re-Closing

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Auto Re-Closing
• Auto reclosing scheme is to re-energize the line after a fault trip.
• Sufficient time must be allowed after tripping for the fault to disappear (Transient
faults) prior to reclosing.
• Objectives
– To improve the continuity of supply.
– To maintain the system stability and synchronism.
• Auto-reclose is confined to Overhead Lines and Feeders
– Transient Faults 80 to 85%
– Semi-Permanent Faults 5 to 10%
– Permanent 10%
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Auto Re-Closing
• Auto-reclose is not used on cables, transformers and machines as majority of faults
are permanent, hence it will can cause unnecessary additional damage.
• Auto Re-closer is a circuit breakers with built-in automatic reclosing and opening
capability (Auto Reclosing) under fault conditions. The auto reclosing functions are
limited to preset number of times at preset intervals after which, it gets locked out.
The auto reclosing feature is useful in avoiding the permanent shutdown in case of
temporary faults.

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Auto Re-Closing
• Re-closers may cooperate with down-stream protective devices called sectionalizers
which are less expensive.
• Sectionalizer is a normal load break switch with built-in capability to open
automatically. Sectionalizers are designed to open based on the ‘fault count’ setting.
The Sectionalizer trips in no-load condition, after Auto Re-closer has opened and
before it recloses again.

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Terms used in Auto Re-Closing
• Dead time :
The time between the auto-reclose scheme being energized and the completion of
initiating the closing pulse to the breaker.

• Reclaim time :
The time for relay to be ready to respond to further fault incidents from initiation of
the closing pulse to the breaker.

• Number of shots:
The number of attempts at reclosing which an auto-reclose scheme will make before
locking out on a permanent fault. The number of shots may be fixed or adjustable.
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Single Shot Auto-Reclose Scheme Operation for a
Transient Fault

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Q&A

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