GENERATOR

PROTECTION
INTRODUCTION
A generator is the heart of an electrical power system, as it
converts mechanical energy into its electrical equivalent, which is
further distributed at various voltages. It therefore requires a
‘prime mover’ to develop this mechanical power and this can take
the form of steam, gas or water turbines or diesel engines.
TURBINES
Steam turbines are used virtually exclusively by
the main power utilities, whereas in industry
three main types of prime movers are in use:
1. Steam turbines: Normally found where waste steam is available
and used for base load or standby.
2. Gas turbines: Generally used for peak-lopping or mobile
applications.
3. Diesel engines: Most popular as standby plant.
 It will be appreciated that a modern large generating unit is a
complex system, comprising of number of components:

• Stator winding with associated main and unit transformers

• Rotor with its field winding and exciters
• Turbine with its boiler, condenser, auxiliary fans and pumps.
GENERATOR HAZARDS AND PROBLEMS
ARE AS FOLLOWS
Internal faults
1. Primary and backup phase or ground faults in the stator and
associated Areas
2. Ground faults in the rotor and loss-of-field excitation

B. System disturbances and operational hazards

1. Loss of prime-mover; generator motoring
2. Over excitation: volts or hertz protection
3. Inadvertent energization : non synchronized connection
4. Unbalanced currents: negative sequence ; breaker pole flashover
5. Thermal overload
SYSTEM DISTURBANCES AND
OPERATIONAL HAZARDS
6. Off-frequency operation for large steam turbines
7. Un cleared system faults: backup distance ; voltage
controlled time over current (50V)
8. Overvoltage
9. Loss of synchronism: out of step
10. Sub synchronous oscillations
11. Loss of voltage transformer signal to relaying or
voltage regulator
12. Generator breaker failure
GENERATOR PROTECTION
The following are the main protection schemes adopted for
generator.
1. Generator Differential Protection
2. Generator & Transformer Differential Protection
3. Loss of Field or Loss of Excitation Protection
4. Negative Sequence or Current Unbalance Protection
5. Over Fluxing or Over Excitation Protection
6. Over Current Protection
7. Stator Earth Fault Protection
8.

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GENERATOR PROTECTION
8. Rotor Earth Fault Protection (64R)
9. Restricted Earth Fault Protection
10. Backup Impedance Protection
11. Low Forward Power Protection
12. Reverse Power Protection
13. Pole Slip Protection
14. Pole Discrepancy Protection
15. Local Breaker Back Protection
16. Bus Bar Protection
17. Over Frequency Protection
18. Under Frequency Protection
19. Over Voltage Protection

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MANY DIFFERENT FAULTS CAN OCCUR ON THIS
SYSTEM, FOR WHICH DIVERSE PROTECTION
MEANS ARE REQUIRED. THESE CAN BE
GROUPED INTO TWO CATEGORIES:
STATOR INSULATION FAILURE
 The stator insulation failure can lead to earth fault in the
system.
 The neutral point of the generator stator winding is normally
earthed so that it can be protected, and impedance is generally
used to limit earth fault current.
Earth fault protection can be applied by using a transformer and
adopting a relay to measure the earthing transformer secondary
current or by connecting a voltage-operated relay in parallel with
the loading resistor
GROUND-FAULT PROTECTION FOR UNGROUNDED
GENERATORS GROUNDED BY THE CONNECTED
SYSTEM.
OVERLOAD PROTECTION
Generators are very rarely troubled by overload, as the amount of
power they can deliver is a function of the prime mover, which is
being continuously monitored by its governors and regulator.
Where overload protection is provided, it usually takes the form of
a thermocouple or thermistor embedded in the stator winding. The
rotor winding is checked by measuring the resistance of the field
winding.
OVER CURRENT PROTECTION
It is normal practice to apply IDMTL relays for over current
protection, not for thermal protection of the machine but as a
‘back-up’ feature to operate only under fault conditions. In the
case of a single machine feeding an isolated system, this relay
could be connected to a single CT in the neutral end in order to
cover a winding fault. With multiple generators in parallel, there is
difficulty in arriving at a suitable setting so the relays are then
connected to line side CTs.
 OVERVOLTAGE PROTECTION
 Overvoltage can occur as either a high-speed transient or a
sustained condition at system frequency.
 Power frequency over voltages are normally the result of:

1. Defective voltage regulator

2. Manual control error (sudden variation of load)

3. Sudden loss of load due to other circuit tripping.

OVERVOLTAGE PROTECTION
Overvoltage protection is therefore only applied to unattended
automatic machines, at say a hydroelectric station. The normal
setting adopted are quite high almost equal to 150%
but with instantaneous operation
 UNBALANCED LOADING
 Any unbalanced condition can be broken down into positive,
negative and zero sequence components. The positive component
behaves similar to the balanced load. The zero components
produce no main armature reaction. However, the negative
component creates a reaction field, which rotates counter to the
DC field, and hence produces a flux, which cuts the rotor at twice
the rotational velocity. This induces double frequency currents in
the field system and rotor body.
GROUND (ZERO-SEQUENCE) DIFFERENTIAL
PROTECTION FOR A GENERATOR USING A
DIRECTIONAL GROUND–OVERCURRENT
RELAY.
UNBALANCED LOADING
The resulting eddy currents are very large, so severe that excessive
heating occurs, quickly heating the brass rotor slot wedges to the
softening point where they are susceptible to being extruded under
centrifugal force until they stand above the rotor surface, in danger
of striking the stator iron
It is therefore very important that negative phase sequence
protection be installed, to protect
against unbalanced loading and it consequences.
ROTOR FAULTS
 The rotor has a DC supply fed onto its winding which sets up a
standing flux. When this flux is rotated by the prime mover, it
cuts the stator winding to induce current and voltage therein.
This DC supply from the exciter need not be earthed
ROTOR FAULTS
 If an earth fault occurs, no fault current will flow and the
machine can continue to run indefinitely, however, one would
be unaware of this condition. Danger then arises if a second
earth fault occurs at another point in the winding, thereby
shorting out portion of the winding. This causes the field
current to increase and be diverted, burning out conductors.
ROTOR FAULTS
In addition, the fluxes become distorted resulting in unbalanced
mechanical forces on the rotor causing violent vibrations, which
may damage the bearings and even displace the rotor by an
amount, which would cause it to foul the stator. It is therefore
important that rotor earth fault protection be installed. This can
be done in a variety of ways.
ROTOR EARTH FAULT PROTECTION
METHODS
 Potentiometer method
 AC injection method

 DC injection method
POTENTIOMETER METHOD

The field winding is connected with a resistance

having center tap. The tap point is connected to
the earth through a sensitive relay R. An earth
fault in the field winding produces a voltage
across the relay.
POTENTIOMETER METHOD
AC INJECTION METHOD

This method requires an auxiliary supply, which is

injected to the field circuit through a coupling
capacitance. The capacitor prevents the chances of
higher DC current passing through the transformer.
AC INJECTION METHOD
DC INJECTION METHOD

This method avoids the capacitance currents by rectifying

the injection voltage adopted in the previous method.
The auxiliary voltage is used to bias the field voltage to
be negative with respect to the earth. An earth fault
causes the fault current to flow through the DC power
unit causing the sensitive relay to operate under fault
conditions
DC INJECTION METHOD
REVERSE POWER
Reverse power protection is applicable when generators run in
parallel, and to protect against the failure of the prime mover.
Should this fail then, the generator would motor by taking
power from the system and could aggravate the failure of the
mechanical drive.
LOSS OF EXCITATION
 If the rotor field system should fail for whatever reason,
the generator would then operate as an induction
generator, continuing to generate power determined by
the load setting of the turbine governor.

It would be operating at a slip frequency and

although there is no immediate danger to the
set, heating will occur, as the machine will not
have been designed to run continuously in such
an asynchronous fashion.
LOSS OF EXCITATION
 Some form of field failure detection is thus required, and on
the larger machines, this is augmented by a mho-type
impedance relay to detect this condition on the primary side.
LOSS OF SYNCHRONIZATION
A generator could lose synchronism with the power
system because of a severe system fault disturbance, or
operation at a high load with a leading power factor. This
shock may cause the rotor to oscillate, with consequent
variations of current, voltage and power factor.
LOSS OF SYNCHRONIZATION
Alternatively, trip the field switch to run the machine as an
asynchronous generator, reduce the field excitation and load,
then reclose the field switch to resynchronize smoothly.
FIELD SUPPRESSION
It is obvious that if a machine should develop a fault, the field
should be suppressed as quickly as possible, otherwise the
generator will continue to feed its own fault and increase the
damage. Removing the motive power will not help in view of
the large kinetic energy of the machine.
L OSS OF P RIME -MOVER : GENERATOR
MOTORING
If the prime -mover supply is removed while the
generator is connected to the power system and the
field excite d, the power system will drive the unit as
a synchronous motor. This is particularly critical for
steam and hydro units. For steam turbine s it causes
over heating and potential damage to the turbine and
turbine blades.
 POWER DIRECTIONAL RELAY

The power directional relay is connected

to operate when real power flows into the
generator. Typical relay sensitivities with
microprocessor relays are as low as 1 mA,
which may be required when a generator
can operate with partial prime-mover
input. The operating time can be
approximately 2 sec.
TYPICAL PROTECTION SCHEME FOR
INDUSTRIAL GENERATOR
The various methods discussed above are normally applicable for
an industrial generator protection. The following sketch shows the
various protection schemes employed in an industrial environment.

Of course, not all protections are adopted for

every generator since the cost of the installation
decides the economics of protection required
 Generator Differential Protection
• It is one of the important protections to protect generator winding
against internal faults such as phase-to-phase and three phase-
to-ground faults. This type of fault is very serious because very
large current can flow and produce large amounts of damage to
the winding if it is allowed to persist. One set current transformers
of the generator on neutral and phase side, is exclusively used for
this protection.

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GENERATOR DIFFERENTIAL PROTECTION

 The differential protection can not detect turn-to-turn fault and

phase to ground within one winding for high impedance neutral
grounding generator such as ours. Upon the detection of a
phase-to-phase fault in the winding, the unit is tripped with out
time delay.
Typical differential (87) connections for the protection of
wye- and delta connected generators: (a) wye-connected
generator
Typical differential (87) connections for the protection of
wye- and delta connected generators: delta-connected
generator.
Ground (zero-sequence) differential protection for a generator
using a directional ground–over current relay.
STATOR PHASE-FAULT PROTECTION FOR ALL
SIZE GENERATORS
MULTI-CT DIFFERENTIAL PROTECTION (87)
FOR ALL SIZE GENERATORS
CAPACITIVE COUPLING THROUGH TRANSFORMER
BANKS FOR PRIMARY-SIDE GROUND FAULTS: (A)
THREE-PHASE SYSTEM DIAGRAM