Balanced Faults Part 1

Balanced Faults
POWER SYSTEMS
LO3
Introduction
Most of the faults on the power system lead to a short-circuit condition.
When such a condition occurs, a heavy current (called short circuit current) flows through the
equipment, causing considerable damage to the equipment and interruption of service to the
consumers.
Therefore, There is probably no other subject of greater importance to an electrical engineer
than the question of determination of short circuit currents under fault conditions.
The choice of apparatus and the design and arrangement of practically every equipment in the
power system depends upon short-circuit current considerations.
Objectives
 Define fault level.
 Reduce a power circuit with a symmetrical fault to a single
impedance and source.
 Derive the fault current and fault level MVA.
 Solve problems with symmetrical fault
Fault Analysis
An essential part of the design of a power supply network is the calculation of the
currents which flow in the components when a symmetrical fault occurs.
High currents may cause considerable damage to equipment if they are not immediately
isolated.
 High currents may also result in system instability if they are not cleared fast. The system
becomes unbalanced.
Fault calculations provide the values of currents and voltages on a power system during fault
conditions. Why I need this info???
This information is required to design an adequate protection relaying system and to
determine interruption capacity for circuit breakers at each switching location.
Fault Analysis
In an electric power system, a fault or fault current is any abnormal electric current.
For example, a short circuit is a fault in which current bypasses the normal load.
An open-circuit fault occurs if a circuit is interrupted by some failure.
In three-phase systems, a fault may involve one or more phases and ground, or may
occur only between phases.
In a "ground fault“ or "earth fault", current flows into the earth.
The prospective short circuit current of a predictable fault can be calculated for most
situations.
In power systems, protective devices can detect fault conditions and operate circuit
breakers and other devices to limit the loss of service due to a failure.
Types of Faults
In a polyphase system, a fault may affect all phases equally which is a "symmetrical
fault".
If only some phases are affected, the resulting "asymmetrical fault" becomes more
complicated to analyse.
The analysis of these types of faults is often simplified by using methods such as
symmetrical components.
The design of systems to detect and interrupt power system faults is the main objective
of power-system protection.
There are generally two types of faults in power systems:
1- Symmetrical Faults: A symmetric or balanced fault affects each of the three phases
equally, In transmission line faults, roughly 5% are symmetric.
Types of Faults
2- Asymmetrical Faults: An asymmetric or unbalanced fault does not affect each of the
three phases equally.
Common types of asymmetric faults such as
 Line-to-Line: Is a short circuit between lines, caused by ionization of air, or when lines
come into physical contact, for example due to a broken insulator.
Line-to-Ground: Is a short circuit between one line and ground, very often caused by
physical contact, for example due to lightning or other storm damage.
Double Line-to-Ground: occurs when two lines come into contact with the ground (and
each other), also commonly due to storm damage.
Assumptions made in fault calculations
The generator is represented by a voltage source in series with an impedance (or

reactance if resistance is neglected).
Load is represented by constant impedance.
Resistances of the circuit are neglected. In a power system, the reactances of the
machines and transformers usually predominant.
All transformers are assumed to be at nominal taps and magnetizing currents are
neglected, i.e. they are represented as series elements.
Load current is ignored as it is small compared with the fault current.
Internal emf of all generators are equal in magnitude and are in-phase. Hence, all
voltage sources can be lumped together into one single equivalent generator.
Symmetrical Faults calculation
In this type of faults, the three-phase lines are shorted together to the ground. The
magnitude of the fault current in each phase will be the same and displaced by 1200
from each other.
Because of balanced nature of fault, only one phase need be considered in calculations
since condition in the other two phases will also be similar.
points to be particularly noted:
1- The symmetrical fault rarely occurs in practice as majority of the faults are of
unsymmetrical nature.
2- The symmetrical fault is the most severe and imposes more heavy duty on the circuit
breaker.
Balanced
three-phase
faults, like
balanced 3-φ
loads, may be
handled on a
line-to-neutral
basis.
Limitation of Fault Current
When a short circuit occurs at any point in a system, the short-circuit current is limited by the
impedance of the system up to the point of fault.
This shows that the knowledge of the impedances of various equipment and circuits in the line
of the system is very important for the determination of short circuit currents.
In many situations, the impedances limiting the fault current are largely reactive, such as
transformers, reactors and generators.
Cables and lines are mostly resistive, but where the total reactance in calculations exceeds 3
times the resistance, the latter is usually neglected. The error introduced by this assumption will
not exceed 5%.
Percentage Reactance
The reactance of generators, transformers, reactors etc. is usually expressed in percentage
reactance to permit rapid short circuit calculations.
The percentage reactance of a circuit is: It is the percentage of the total phase-voltage dropped
in the circuit when full-load current is flowing.
Percentage Reactance and Base kVA
Generally, the various equipment used in the power system have different kVA ratings.
Therefore, it is necessary to find the percentage reactances of all the elements on a common
kVA rating. This common kVA rating is known as base kVA.
The value of this base kVA may be :
(i) equal to that of the largest plant
(ii) equal to the total plant capacity
(iii) any arbitrary value
Fault Current Calculation
The voltage at the point where fault occurs is considered zero. However, there will be some
value for the voltage when fault resistance is taken into account.
The system is considered in a balanced state and per phase analysis is applied.
A. Calculation of Fault Current in Amps
The per unit fault current is calculated using Ohm’sLaw:
The fault per unit impedance ZF PU represents the equivalent impedance. The fault current
flows through it during the fault.
Note: All the resistors and the reactances that ZF represent must found for the same base
apparent power which is the SBASE.
Normally, it is assumed that the generators are operated at rated voltages almost equal to
the base voltages, i.e. EPU = VPU ≈ 1.0 pu. Therefore,
Therefore the fault current in Amps will be equal to:

b. Fault Level or short circuit Level MVA Calculation
In a power system, the maximum the fault current (or fault MVA) that can flow into a zero
impedance fault is necessary to be known.
This can either be the balanced three phase value.
The Fault Level defines the value for the symmetrical condition.
The fault level is usually expressed in MVA (or corresponding per-unit value), with the
maximum fault current value being converted using the nominal voltage rating.
b. Fault Level or short circuit Level MVA Calculation
Rated line voltage = base voltage line

- Fault level is the value of the apparent power during the fault. We don’t represent it by
SF but we call it fault level or short-circuit level MVAF.
- Since the fault current is high. The fault level takes high value in MVA. That is why it
is called also fault level MVA or short-circuit MVA.
Another formula is used to find the MVA:
We know that the fault current is equal to IF = IF PU x IBASE = IBASE / ZF PU
Fault Level MVA = √3 VBASE IF = √3 VBASE x IBASE / ZF PU = SBASE / ZF PU
Fault Level MVA = SBASE / ZF PU
b. Fault Level or short circuit Level MVA
Calculation
In both cases, if you want to find the fault current or fault level in MVA, you need to find
first the per unit impedance during the fault ZF PU where the fault current flows through
from the source to fault point to ground.
Example
Consider a 3-phase transmission line operating at 66 kV and connected through a
1000kVA transformer with 5% reactance to a generating station bus-bar. The generator
is of 2500 kVA with 10% reactance. The single line diagram of the system is shown in
Figure below. Suppose a short-circuit fault between three phases occurs at the high
voltage terminals of transformer. It will be shown that whatever value of base kVA we
may choose, the value of short-circuit current will be the same.
(i) Suppose we choose 2500 kVA as the common base kVA.
On this base value, the reactances of the various elements in the system will be:
Reactance of generator at 2500 kVA base:
Reactance of transformer at 2500 kVA base:
The base current corresponding to 2500 kVA base at 66 kV is given by;
(ii) Now, suppose we choose 5000 kVA as the common base value.
This is the same as in the previous case.
From the previous illustration, it is clear that whatever may be the value of base kVA,
short-circuit current is the same. However, in the interest of simplicity, numerically
convenient value for the base kVA should be chosen.

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Balanced Faults

The generator is represented by a voltage source in series with an impedance (or

Therefore the fault current in Amps will be equal to:

Rated line voltage = base voltage line

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