POWER SYSTEM

PROTECTION
PE 422
COURSE CONTENTS

 Introduction
 Review of Background Material
 Relaying Instrumentation
 Protection fundamentals
 Protective relaying application
 Stability
 Reclosing and load shedding
 Fundamentals of Automation
INTRODUCTION
 A protection scheme in a power system is designed to
continuously monitor the power system to ensure maximum
continuity of electrical supply with minimum damage to life,
equipment, and property.
 For the design of protection schemes it is necessary to know:
1. Fault characteristics of different elements of a power system.
2. Tripping characteristics of different protective relays
A good protective scheme can be designed by obtaining the
closest match between tripping and fault characteristics.
Design has to ensure that relays will detect undesirable conditions
and then trip to disconnect the affected area, but remain restrained
at all other times
Dependence of Modern Society on Electric supply
 Domestic usage
 Industrial
 Commercial
Railway networks, telecommunication systems
Hospitals, banks, post offices
No power system can be designed in such a way
that it would never fail.
Faults and abnormal operating conditions
1. Shunt Faults (short circuits)
When the path of the load current is cut short due to insulation
damage then it is called short circuit.
Insulation may be damaged due to no. of reasons:
a. Aging
b. Temperature
c. Hail, snow, rain
d. Chemical pollution
e. Foreign objects
f. Other causes
ingle Line to Ground Fault due to flash over of Insulator String
These faults are due to flash over of spark gap across the string
insulators.
Short circuit may be
Temporary, permanent (dead short circuit), partial short circuit.
 Mostly these are Temporary faults and supply is restored
after deionized of spark path
 Reclosures are used for internal re-energization
(for low voltage system i.e. distribution system 3 attempts
are allowed after which breaker is locked out) Whereas for
high voltage levels where the damage due to short circuit may
be very large only one reclosure attempt is allowed.
A fault which bypasses the entire load current through itself is
called a metallic fault. Such faults gives very low or
practically zero fault resistance.
In partial short circuits, fault resistance can be modelled as a
non-zero and in parallel with the intended path of the current.
Mostly fault resistance is the resistance of that arc produced
as a result of flashover. Arc resistance has a non linear
behavior in nature.
Arc resistance according to Warrington model:
.
R𝑎𝑟𝑐 = 8750 (𝑆 + 3𝑢𝑡)/𝐼1 4

Where S – spacing in feet

u – velocity of air in mph
t – time in seconds
I – fault current in amperes.
 Effects of Shunts Faults
Shunts faults cause heavy currents to flow
Heavy currents causes damage to the equipment in different
ways:
a)Heating the equipment through which fault currents passes,
which may cause fire
And overheating cause Insulation damage.
b) Due to over current transformer may suffer with mechanical
stresses developed in winding, as two current carrying
conductors experience a force which may goes out of bound
during fault, causing mechanical distortion and damage.
c) Faults cause swings in all interconnected
generators/alternators [near the fault electrical output of
generators falls sharply but mechanical input remains constant]
 Classification of Shunt Faults
 The fault which involves only one of the phase conductors and
ground is known as ground faults. Fault involving two or more
conductors with or without ground is called a phase faults.
 All faults are not equally likely. Single line to ground faults (L-
G) are the most likely whereas the fault due to simultaneous
short circuit between all the three lines, known as the three-
phase fault (L-L-L), is the least likely. This is depicted in Table
Fault Probability of occurrence (%) Severity
L-G 85 Least severe
L-L 8
L-L-G 5
L-L-L 2 Most severe
The probability of faults on different elements of the power
system are different. The transmission lines which are exposed to
the vagaries of the atmosphere are the most likely to be subjected
to faults. Indoor equipment is least likely to be subjected to
faults.
Power system elements Probability of faults (%)

Over head line 50

Under ground cables 9
Transformers 10
Generators 7
Switchgear 12
CT, PT relays,
control equipment, etc 12
 Phasor Diagram of Voltages and Currents
During Various Faults
A fault is accompanied by a build-up of current, which is
obvious. At the same time there is a fall in voltage
throughout the power system. If the fault is a metallic fault,
the voltage at the fault location is zero. The voltage at the
terminals of the generator will also drop, though not
drastically. If the source is ideal, there will be no drop in
voltage at the generator terminals. Normally the relay is
away from the fault location. A fault is characterized by a
build-up of current, and to a certain extent, collapse of
voltage.
Various ground faults and phase faults.
The voltage at the relay location during fault is less in
magnitude than that during the pre-fault condition and
also lags its pre-fault value.
Fall of voltage at the relay location in single line diagram
of a three-phase system.
 Abnormal Operating Conditions
The boundary between the normal and faulty conditions is not
crisp. There are certain operating conditions inherent to the
operation of the power system which are definitely not normal, but
these are not electrical faults either.
1. the magnetizing inrush current of a transformer,
2. starting current of an induction motor,
3. the conditions during power swing.
 Should Protective Relays Trip During Abnormal Operating
Conditions?
Magnitude wise above mentioned currents are look like a fault, but
these are not conditions when a relay has to operate. The
protective system must be able to discriminate between the normal,
abnormal operating conditions and between the faults.
 Can Protective Relays Prevent Faults?

 What are Protective Relays Supposed to Do?

sensitivity
selectivity and
Speed
Evolution of Power Systems
a) Isolated (Radial) simple
b) Interconnected (Network) complicated
Isolated Power System:
Single source of supply
Simple
no stability problem

Problems: In case of fault, if protective relay remove

generator from system there may be a blackout (if no
additional backup source of power is not available).

Required special attention and quick response to fault as

disturbance of mechanical and electrical balance.
Isolated Power System:
Single source of supply
Simple
no stability problem

Problems: In case of fault, if protective relay remove

generator from system there may be a blackout (if no
additional backup source of power is not available).

Required special attention and quick response to fault as

disturbance of mechanical and electrical balance.
Interconnected Power System:
Reliable, power can be supplied through different alternate
paths.
Economic load dispatch

Problems: due to many generating source system becomes

complex so is the protection of the whole system.

Voltage Stability of the system is difficult (tripping)

Lengthy system and opened to various undesirable effects. Any

change /disturbance frequently propagate through the system.
This is also called the negative synergy of the system.
Various States of Operation of a Power System
A power system is a dynamic entity.
Its state is likely to drift from one state to the other .
When the power system is operating in steady state, it is said to be
in the normal operating state. In this state, there is enough
generation capacity available to meet the load, therefore, the
frequency is stable around the nominal frequency of 50 Hz or 60
Hz. This state is also characterized by reactive power balance
between generation and load. This is reflected as a flat voltage
profile with normal voltage throughout the system. The above is
almost a theoretical proposition and a real power system rarely
finds itself in this state.
Another possible state of the power system is the alert state. In
this state, all the parameters are within the limits but a major
disturbing event is imminent, for example, a mighty storm,
accompanied by lightening, which threatens to put some major
EHV tie line out of service. From this state the system may hurtle
into the in-extremis state, as a result of major tripping, after
passing through an emergency state. In the emergency state there
could be overloading in certain tie lines, the system frequency
may take a significant plunge or may surge and the voltage profile
may be far from flat. The emergency situation may lead to total ac
failure as a result of cascade tripping. This is indeed the nightmare
and the system controllers at the load dispatch centers try their
best to avoid it.
relaying is profoundly affected by the state of the system while on
the other, the system's fate is decided by the settings of the relays.
Ideally, relay settings must be live to the system state and must
change so as to operate in the best interest of system stability and
security. There are, however, certain other ground realities which
prevent us from implementing a totally adaptive online relay
setting philosophy.
A Protection System and Its Attributes
Figure shows a protection system for the distance
protection of a transmission line, consisting of a CT
and a PT, a relay and its associated circuit breaker.
Every protection system will have these basic
components. Except in non-directional over-current
protection, as well as in differential protection, the
PT will not be required.
The relay can be considered as a black-box having current and
voltage at its input, and an output, in the form of the closure of
a normally-open contact. This output of the relay is wired in
the trip circuit of the associated circuit breaker so as to
complete this circuit. The relay has another user settable input
which is the setting of the relay. The relay carries out the
processing of information provided by the CT and the PT in
accordance with some predetermined logic to arrive at a
discriminant, and compares it with the settings to take a
trip/no-trip decision. The conceptual diagram of a generalized
relay is shown in Figure
General properties that a protective system
should possess.

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

2. Selectivity
In detecting the fault and isolating the faulty element, the
protective system must be very selective. Ideally, the
protective system should isolate faulty element, thus causing
minimum disruption to the system.
3. Speed
The longer the fault persists on the system, the larger is the
damage to the system and higher is the possibility that the
system will lose stability. Thus, it helps a lot if the entire
process of fault detection and removal of the faulty part is
accomplished in as short a time as feasible. Therefore, the
speed of the protection is very important. It must, however, be
mentioned that speed and accuracy bear an inverse
relationship! The high-speed systems tend to be less accurate.
This is for the simple reason that the high speed system has
lesser amount of information at its disposal than a slow-speed
system.
4. Reliability and Dependability

A protective system is of no use if it is not reliable.

Simple system is more reliable.

No system ideal there are always chances of fault/system failure

To make system more reliable extra features are added (back up

protection) to increase the protective system reliability and
dependability.
 System Transducers
Current transformers and voltage transformers form a very
important link between the power system and the protective
system. These transducers basically extract the information
regarding current and voltage from the power system under
protection and pass it on to the protective relays. While
doing this, they insulate the low-voltage protective system
(both personnel and protective apparatus) from the high-
voltage power system.
 Current Transformer
The current transformer has two jobs to do.
1 It steps down the current to such levels that it can be easily
handled by the relay current coil.
Standard current ratings used in practice are 5 A and 1 A.
2. It isolates the relay circuit from the high voltage of the
EHV system.
Ideally, the current transformer should faithfully transform
the current without any errors. In practice, there is always
some error. The error creeps in, both in magnitude and in
phase angle. These errors are known as raho error and phase
angle error.
Figure: Current Transformer
CT are also used for metering purpose but there is a
difference between a metering CT and protective CT.

Metering CT is designed in such a way that in case of fault

it will saturate thus save the component linked/installed to
the secondary of CT.

Protective CT is designed to reproduce the large fault

currents.
Current Transformer (continued)
 a current transformer has a
 primary winding,
 Magnetic core
 secondary winding.
Alternating current flowing in the primary produces a magnetic
field in the core, which then induces current flow in the secondary
winding circuit. A primary objective of current transformer design
is to ensure that the primary and secondary circuits are efficiently
coupled, so that the secondary current bears an accurate relationship
to the primary current.
 The most common design of CT consists of a length of wire wrapped many
times around a silicon steel ring passed over the circuit being measured.

 The CT's primary circuit therefore consists of a single 'turn' of conductor,

with a secondary of many hundreds of turns.

 The primary winding may be a permanent part of the current transformer,

with a heavy copper bar to carry current through the magnetic core.

 Window-type current transformers are also common, which can have

circuit cables run through the middle of an opening in the core to provide a
single-turn primary winding.

 When conductors passing through a CT are not centered in the circular (or
oval) opening, slight inaccuracies may occur.
 Current transformers used in metering equipment for three-phase 400
ampere electricity supply

 Shapes and sizes can vary depending on the end user or switchgear
manufacture.

 Typical examples of low voltage single ratio metering current transformers

are either ring type or plastic moulded case.

 High-voltage current transformers are mounted on porcelain bushings to

insulate them from ground. Some CT configurations slip around the bushing
of a high-voltage transformer or circuit breaker, which automatically centers
the conductor inside the CT window.
 The primary circuit is largely unaffected by the insertion of
the CT.
 The rated secondary current is commonly standardized at 1
or 5 amperes. For example, a 4000:5 CT would provide an
output current of 5 amperes when the primary was passing
4000 amperes. The secondary winding can be single ratio
or multi ratio, with five taps being common for multi ratio
CTs. The load, or burden, of the CT should be of low
resistance.
 If the voltage time integral area is higher than the core's
design rating, the core goes into saturation towards the end
of each cycle, distorting the waveform and affecting
accuracy.
Usage
 Current transformers are used extensively for measuring
current and monitoring the operation of the power grid.
Along with voltage leads, revenue-grade CTs drive the
electrical utility's watt-hour meter on virtually every
building with three-phase service, and every residence
with greater than 200 amp service.

 The CT is typically described by its current ratio from

primary to secondary. Often, multiple CTs are installed
as a "stack" for various uses (for example, protection
devices and revenue metering may use separate CTs).
Similarly potential transformers are used for measuring
voltage and monitoring the operation of the power grid.
Safety precautions
 Care must be taken that the secondary of a current transformer
is not disconnected from its load while current is flowing in the
primary, as the transformer secondary will attempt to continue
driving current across the effectively infinite impedance. This will
produce a high voltage across the open secondary (into the range
of several kilovolts in some cases), which may cause arcing. The
high voltage produced will compromise operator and equipment
safety and permanently affect the accuracy of the transformer.
 Accuracy
The accuracy of a CT is directly related to a number of factors including:

 Burden

 Burden class/saturation class

 Rating factor

 Load

 External electromagnetic field

 Temperature and

 Physical configuration.

 The selected tap, for multi-ratio CT's

 Voltage Transformer

The voltage transformer steps down the high voltage of the line to a
level safe enough for the relaying system and personnel to handle.

The standard secondary voltage on line-to-line is 110 V.

This helps in standardizing the protective relaying equipment

irrespective of the value of the primary EHV adopted. -A PT primary is
connected in parallel at the point where a measurement is desired, unlike
a CT whose primary is in series with the line in which current is to be
measured. A conventional electromagnetic VT is shown in Figure 1.12.
The VT also suffers from ratio and phase angle errors. Further treatment
of VT errors can be found in Appendix 1.
Potential/Voltage Transformer
 Circuit Breaker
The circuit breaker is an electrically operated switch
 is capable of safely making,
 breaking, short-circuit currents.
 The circuit breaker is operated by the output of the associated relay.
Trip Circuit of a CB
The circuit breaker contacts are in a closed position by the force of a spring.
Energy is stored in the spring during the closing operation. In order to trip the
circuit breaker, it is necessary to release a latch either manually or by
energizing the trip-coil of the circuit breaker. The trip-battery supplies energy
to the trip-coil for this operation. The relay output contact is wired in series
with the trip-battery and the trip-coil. Thus when the relay operates, the trip-
coil gets energized and the circuit breaker quickly parts its contacts. The
mechanical arrangement is quite complicated and only its essence is depicted
in Figure
Trip circuit of a circuit breaker
 Organization of Protection

 The protection is organized in a very logical fashion.

 provide a ring of security around each and every element of the power system.

 If there is any fault within this ring, the relays associated with it must trip all the
allied circuit breakers so as to remove the faulty element from the rest of the power
system. This 'ring of security' is called the zone of protection.

Faults occurred within the zone are known as internal faults and those outside are
called external faults
The farthest point from the , relay location, which is still inside the zone, is called the
reach point. The distance between the relay location and the reach point is termed the
reach of the relay.
Figure Zone of protection external fault/internal fault
 Zones of Protection

Various protection zones are shown in Figure.

the adjacent zones overlap,

if the fault takes place in the overlapped portion, more than the minimum
number of circuit breakers will trip, causing a major dislocation to the
system. Each of the zones may be implemented using a different relaying
principle. All the zones, in practice, may not be as well marked out as they
are shown in the figure and may contract or expand depending upon the
various system conditions
Figure Various zone of Protection
 Primary and Back-up Protection

Primary protection may fail due to several reasons, i.e. failure of

CT/PT, relay, circuit breaker.
One of the possible causes of the circuit breaker failure is the failure of
the trip-battery due to inadequate maintenance. We must have a second
line of defense in such a situation. Therefore, it is a normal practice to
provide another zone of protection which should operate and isolate the
faulty element in case the primary protection fails.
Backup protection should locate on a different location
Must wait for the primary protection
In other words backup protection operating time must be equal to the
operating time of primary plus operating time of the primary circuit
breaker.
Consider the radial system shown in Figure. Relay B, in conjunction
with circuit breaker CBB, provides primary protection to the line section
B-C. Relay A with circuit breaker CBA provides back-up protection to
the section B-C. Consider a fault in section B-C as shown in Figure

Figure Primary and Backup Protection

When a fault takes place, both the primary relay RB and the back-up
relay RA, start operating simultaneously. in case the primary protection
(provided by RB + CBB) operates successfully, the line B-C gets de-
energized but the loads on buses A and B remain
unaffected. Therefore, the back-up protection 'provided by RA + CBA
resets without issuing a trip command. The sequence of events in such a
case is depicted in Figure However, in case the primary protection fails
to operate, the back-up which is already monitoring the fault, waits for
the time in which the primary would have cleared the fault and then
issues the trip command to its allied circuit breakers. When the back-up
operates, the time for which the fault persists is longer and disruption to
the loads also lasts longer.
Figure Primary and Backup Protection sequence of events, normal operation
 Maloperations
 Need of coordination between primary and secondary protection
 In case of loss of selectivity between primary and secondary
protection system will be interrupted for longer time.
Figure shows the maloperation of primary and backup protection and
backup protection also gave the trip command to CB.
Figure Primary and back-up protection: sequence of events:
loss of selectivity
 Various Power System Elements That Need
Protection
The power system consists of alternators; busbars, transformers for
transmission and distribution, transmission lines at various voltage levels
from EHV to 11 ky cables, induction and synchronous motors, reactors,
capacitors, instrument and protective CTs and PTs, various control and
metering equipment, etc.

Each element requires a different protection due to their unique set of faults
and abnormal conditions.
 Various Principles of Power System
Protection
Fault current sudden built up under fault conditions, thus over current relay is the
most natural principal of relaying.
However, fault current magnitude is a function of type of fault and the source
impedance. The source impedance, which depends upon the number of generating
units that are in service at a given time, keeps changing from time to time. Therefore,
the reach as well as the operating time of over-current relaying keep changing from
fault to fault, and time to time.
Another natural and appealing principle is the differential protection. It is based on
the premise that the current entering a protected section must be equal to that leaving
it. Any discrepancy between the two indicates the presence of a fault. However, it is
impractical to apply this principle to a transmission line because the ends are far apart
and it is not easy to compare information at the two ends.
To get over the above problem, a distance relay compares voltage
with current at the same end. This, in effect, measures the impedance
between the relay location and the fault point. Since impedance of a
transmission line can be considered to be directly proportional to the
distance along the line, this type of relaying is known as distance
relaying.

In case of a double-end feed system, or parallel lines, or a ring main

system, a fault gets fed from both sides. In order to be selective, the
relay must be sensitive to the direction of fault power flow. The relays
which exhibit such property are termed directional relays.