Distance Protection of Series Compensated Transmission Line

Jitiksha Bhatt1, Kashyap Pathak2

1
Department of Electrical Engineering, Parul University

2
Department of Electrical Engineering, Parul University

Abstract— In order to meet the high demand for power transmission capacity, some power companies have installed series
capacitor on power transmission line. This allows reduction in line impedance, thus resulting increased power transmission
capacity. The protective distance relays use impedance measurement in order to determine the location and presence of faults.
The introduction of the capacitance in series with the line reactance adds certain complexities. The paper presents series
compensated transmission line model by using PSCAD/EMTDC. Upon extensive testing on different data set of fault cases with
fault resistance and varying percentage compensation level, performance of the developed method ensures that the proposed
scheme gives the apparent effects on various system parameters by changing series compensation level.

Keywords— distance protection; series compensation; PSCAD/EMTDC; voltage inversion; current inversion

I. INTRODUCTION
Series compensation plays the vital role in modern heavily loaded grid transmission lines. The series capacitor makes sense
because it is simple and could be installed for 15 to 30% of the cost of installing a new line. Series compensation in modern
power systems influences the power flow in particular network segment, reduces active power losses prevents system and sub
synchronous oscillations, and connects more robustly different subsystems to stronger integrated network .The introduction of
series compensation in existing networks requires not only extensive studies into the expected performance of the new system but
also into the influence of its introduction on the operation of existing protection control and monitoring systems [1].
Series Compensation lines used series capacitor to cancel a portion of the inductive reactance of the line, and thereby improving
the power transferring capability of the transmission line. To utilize the whole capacity of the series capacitor installation in a
utility network, it is essential to understand the impact of series compensation on protection to design appropriate ways with
necessary changes. Compensation in a transmission system is normally introduced for extra high voltage transmission line, which
usually employs distance relay (Mho relay) for the protection purpose. A distance relay works on real time calculation of
impedance of the line with real time measurements aided with types of fault information. Therefore, the position of fault with
respect to the compensator (zone of fault) is required for a distance relay to accomplish its overall decision. Faulty phase selection
also increases system stability and availability by allowing single pole tripping. This will improve the behavior of transient
stability and reduces switching overvoltage in the system.
It is very difficult task to handle series compensated line during various abnormalities with relay settings. As it needs to develop
adaptive feature like adaptive settings of relay, as the compensation level would change in the series compensated line. The
introduction of the series capacitance in the lines adds many complexities to the effective performance of distance relay. The relay
will try to look at the ratio of voltage and current to determine the distance to fault in order to decide if the fault is in its own zone
or out of its protection zone. If it is known that the capacitor is always going to be part of fault loop, then reach setting of relay is
possible [2].
II. DISTANCE PROTECTION OF TRANSMISSION LINE
Distance protection scheme is normally applied to protect long transmission lines. It acts as the main protection for overhead
transmission lines and provides back-up protection to the adjoining parts of the network, such as bus bars, generators,
transformers, motors, and further feeders. Distance protection is faster and more selective than overcurrent protection. It is also
less susceptible to changes in the power system conditions. A further advantage of digital distance protection is that it can be
easily adapted for a unit protection scheme, when applied with a communication link. Basically, a distance relay determines the
impedance of the faulted portion of a transmission line from the measured voltages and currents at the relay location. The
measured fault impedance is then compared with the set impedance of the transmission line to be protected. If the measured fault
impedance is smaller than the set impedance of the transmission line, it is assumed that a fault exists on the transmission line
between the relay and the reach point. This implies that the distance protection in its simplest form can reach to a protection
decision with the measured voltage and current at the relay location [3].
A. Mho Distance Relay
High voltage transmission lines are generally equipped with distance protection. The basic idea of distance protection is shown in
figure 1. The distance relay contains three distance measuring units it can be three separate units or one unit for the first and
second zone with a timing unit to increase the delay of the former and a second unit for the third zone[4].

Figure 1. Principle of MHO distance relay

Figure shows the application of distance relaying. Three different sets of separate relay are provided at each end of the line for
three zones. The first and second protective zone provides primary protection and the second and third zone provides remote back
up for the adjacent line. From current and voltage transformers the input quantities line current and phase voltage are given to the
input of the relay. During faulty condition the input quantities fault voltage and current are given to the input of relay for the
protection. The voltage would fall towards zero at the point of the fault. The voltage drop along the line is equal to the product of
the fault current and the impedance fault. The tripping time T1, T2 and T3 correspond to these three zones of operation for circuit
breaker installed at bus bar A and MHO distance relay as shown in figure 2.

Figure 2. Setting zones and selectivity

The MHO distance relay uses three measuring distance units as shown in figure 4. In this figure we can see the different zones of
protection setting in distance relay logic. Zone 1 set for 80% length of line Zone 2 for 50% length of line and Zone 3 protection
for 20% length of line. This all settings are in R-X plan where impedance trajectory comes during faulty conditions.
 Figure 3. MHO circle

It is called mho relay because its characteristic is straight line on admittance diagram. The three unit of mho relay is used to
protect as section of line. The first unit protects 80-90% of the line section that is high speed unit. The second unit protects rest of
line plus 50% of adjacent line section. The third unit provides backup protection to adjacent line. The second and third unit
operates after a pre-set timed delay usually 0.2 to 0.5 and 0.4 to 1 second respectively.
B. Impedance Seen by Distance Relay
Distance relays are designed to protect power systems against four basic types of faults L- G, LL-G, LL and three phase fault. In
order to detect any of above faults each one of the zones of distance relays require six units. Three units for detecting faults
between the phases and the remaining three units for detecting phase to earth faults. The setting of distance relays is always
calculated on the basis of the positive sequence impedance. Table 1 indicates fault impedance calculation formulae for all of the
fault types [5].
Table 1. Fault impedance calculation for different faults
Distance Element Formula
Phase A ZA=VA/(IA+3kIO)

Phase B ZB=VB/(IB+3kIO)

Phase C ZC=VC/(IC+3kIO)

Phase A- Phase B ZAB=VAB/(IA-IB)

Phase B- Phase C ZBC=VBC/(IB-IC)

Phase C- Phase A ZCA=VCA/(IC-IA)

Where, k= (Z0-Z1)/Z1, Z0 and Z1 are zero sequence and positive sequence impedances.
C. Proposed distance protection scheme
The main idea behind the proposed solution is to have a typical digital distance relay scheme with extra information received
from other local and remote relay. The relay changes its setting or action based on the received information. The concept of
adapting the relay performance based on information from other relays is receiving much more acceptance because the speed of
data transfer has increased and the expense of communication systems has declined.
 Figure 4. Sequence of proposed Adaptive Distance Protection Scheme
The proposed adaptive scheme is detailed in the figure 4. First checks to see whether the series compensation level is available
.The steady state characteristics are modelled for the three compensation levels like 0%, 40% and 60%. Depending on the
availability of the compensation level, the relay adapts its setting accordingly. Then the dynamic characteristics of the relay are
obtained using Full Cycle Fourier Algorithm (FCF) to check the status of the particular relay. The capacitance to particular
compensation level will be used for faulted line impedance computation, but will not be used in healthy line’s impedance
calculation. Whenever the required information is not available, the proposed scheme uses the default setting as a conventional
relay without the capacitor in the distance computation [1].
III. VOLTAGE INVERSION AND CURRENT INVERSION
Voltage inversion is the phenomena that the relay sees the fault on the protected transmission line in the reverse direction or the
change of 180 degree in the voltage phase angle. This can be explained in the below figure 5. Here a series compensated
transmission line is shown, where the Series Capacitor (SC) is located in the substation. Now consider a fault occurring after
capacitor bank.

Figure 5. voltage inversion

Relay see an inverted or reverse voltage at the location of fault. In other word relay see this fault as a reverse fault. If the
impedance from the relay to the fault is Capacitive rather than inductive then voltage inversion will occur. Voltage inversion may
affect both directional and distance elements. Thus depending on the location of the fault, the relay sees a fault to be a forward or
a reverse one. Now at a particular bus the condition for the voltage inversion assuming negligible resistance in the fault loops are
as follows,
Conditions specify that the net impedance from bus C to fault location is capacitive and from bus A to Bus C is inductive so at
bus C voltage reversal will occur [6].

Figure 6. Voltage inversion during series compensation

With the SC bypassed, the voltage at the relay point, V’R, is equal to the voltage drop on the line and will lead fault current. If,
With the SC inserted, if will increase due to lower overall impedance and the relay voltage, VR, will be equal to the voltage drop
across the combination of the line and SC reactance.
If XC > XL, the voltage at the relay point, VR, will lag fault current. In this case the voltage at the relay point is inverted. Voltage
inversion can lead to directional discrimination problems at the relay.
 Figure 7. Current inversion during series compensation

A current inversion occurs in a series compensated transmission line, for an internal fault, the equivalent system at one side of the
fault is capacitive and the equivalent system at another side of the fault is inductive. The current flows out of the line at one
terminal, which is referred to as current out feed. In case of current inversion relay sees fault current in the reverse direction
because of large capacitive reactance in the fault loop.

The voltage and current inversion cannot happen simultaneously. Current inversion may occur for the faults closer to the relay
and for system having small source impedance. With the SC bypassed, fault current normally flows from the power source
towards the fault point and fault current will lag source voltage.

IV. TRANSMISSION LINE MODEL

Figure 8. Single line diagram of system

Table 2. System parameters

Line length 300 km
Resistance of line 0.01273 Ω/km
Inductance of line 1.244 mH/km
Capacitance of line 12.74 nF/km
Source 220 KV, 100 MVA
Load 100 MW, 25 MVAR
Frequency 50 Hz
 V. SIMULATION RESULTS
Here, fault applied at three different locations and it as follow: L1-at bus S, L2-at middle of the line and L3-at bus R. The series
capacitor is located at location 1. For further analysis of the effects of series compensation on the operation of distance relay, we
used three sorts of compensation level at 0%, 20%, and 40%. And we tested it for various fault resistance like 0.01, 10, 20, and 40
ohms respectively.

The fault applied at 0.2 sec and duration of fault is 0.06 sec with system frequency of 50Hz. To test the suggested scheme the
simulation studies have been carried out under wide variation of fault resistance and fault locations for double line fault.

Table 3. Line to Line (B-C) fault analysis

Fault R(Ω) Location Fault applied at 0.2 Second

Relay operation in Second

0% 20% 40%
Comp. Comp. Comp.
L1 0.2082 0.2122 0.2122

0.01 L2 0.2119 0.2168 0.2260

L3 0.2193 0.2177 0.2269

L1 0.2119 0.2113 0.2113

10 L2 0.2193 0.2223 0.2223

L3 0.2193 0.2260 0.2260

B-C L1 0.2107 0.2122 0.2131

20 L2 0.2193 0.2269 0.2251

L3 0.2217 0.2260 0.2260

L1 0.2131 0.2131 0.2131

40 L2 0.2205 0.2214 0.2214

L3 --- --- ---

Figure 9. V&I waveform for L-L fault

Figure 10. Fault at location L2, R=0.01Ω, 0% comp.

Figure 11. Fault at location L1, R=10Ω, 40% Comp.

Figure 12. Fault at location L2, R=10Ω, 40% Comp.

 VI. CONCLUSION

This Project involved the usage of PSCAD Simulation for the fault detection of the Transmission Line. Here the simulation
study is analyzed for line to line (B-C) faults. The Performance of the MHO relay is evaluated for different fault locations with
various values of fault resistance. The RX plots show that the relay adapts its characteristic to trip itself in the respective Zones
and for all the three compensation levels (0%, 20%, 40%), according to the information received on the system condition. For
this we can say that when the fault occurs, the particular phase voltage drops and simultaneously the current of that phase is
increased. Here, we can see that the relay issues the trip signal as fault occurs.
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