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Thermal Effect of the Recloser Operation Cycle

on Bare Overhead Conductors
ARTICLE in IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY APRIL 2012
Impact Factor: 1.66 DOI: 10.1109/TPWRD.2012.2183682

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568

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 27, NO. 2, APRIL 2012

Thermal Effect of the Recloser Operation

Cycle on Bare Overhead Conductors
Constantinos D. Halevidis, Member, IEEE, Constantinos G. Karagiannopoulos, and Perikles D. Bourkas

AbstractA new calculation method of the temperature rise

generated from multiple (consecutive) short circuits, to which
bare overhead conductors are subjected, is proposed in this
paper. Multiple short circuits are common in medium-voltage
lines protected by reclosers due to their operation cycle. The
proposed method treats each short circuit as a separate event.
In additiony, the cooling between each short circuit is taken into
account. The results of the proposed method are compared to the
results given by the method of the IEC 60865-1 standard. The
application of the proposed method results in greater temperature
rises when the equivalent thermal current density is greater than a
threshold. Furthermore, alterations to the recloser operation cycle
are performed in order to investigate its effect on the generated
temperature rise, namely, alterations to the reclosing interval
between successive tripping operations and the ratio of fast to
delayed trips. Finally, the proposed method was compared to an
exact numerical solution of the heating process.
Index TermsAutomatic circuit reclosers, medium-voltage distribution systems, multiple short circuits, overhead bare conductors, short-circuit current, thermal effect.

I. INTRODUCTION

USTOMER outages are mainly caused by faults in

the medium-voltage (MV) network [1]. The usage of
reclosers as protection media for MV lines can significantly
improve the network reliability indices (such as the system
average interruption duration and frequency index, etc.) [1], [2].
This improvement can be attributed to the recloser mode of
operation. When a recloser detects a ground or phase fault with
a duration greater than a predetermined value, it breaks the circuit and subsequently recloses the circuit. If the fault is persistent, the recloser repeats the circuit breakingcircuit reclosing operation two times and then trips permanently. Reclosers perform either two fast and two delayed operations or
one fast and three delayed ones. The time interval (reclosing
interval) between successive operations is equal to 12 s. The
majority of faults in overhead lines are transient with a duration
of a few seconds at most [3]. Thus, a recloser averts a line de-energizing due to a transient fault.
Research has been conducted on the effects of the recloser
operation cycle on the network and other protection apparatus [4], [5]. However, the temperature rise (TR), due to the
reclosers four tripping operations has not been sufficiently

Manuscript received November 07, 2010; revised October 11, 2011; accepted
January 07, 2012. Date of publication February 22, 2012; date of current version
March 28, 2012. Paper no. TPWRD-00853-2010.
The authors are with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
High Voltage and Electrical Measurements Laboratory, National Technical
University of Athens, Athens 15780, Greece (e-mail: khalev@central.ntua.gr;
ckarag@central.ntua.gr; pbourkas@central.ntua.gr).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRD.2012.2183682

addressed. Power corporation practice and standards [6] approximate the temperature rise by aggregating the individual
short-circuit durations to calculate the conductor temperature
rise and do not take into account the effect of one tripping
operation to the subsequent operations. Namely, the increased
conductor resistance (due to their increased temperature due to
previous faults) through which the short-circuit currents of the
subsequent trip operations pass and, by extension, the increased
heat release as well as the cooling during the reclosing interval
are not taken into consideration.
The purpose of this paper is the development of a new method
for the calculation of the temperature rise of MV line conductors
protected by a recloser. The proposed method treats each short
circuit as a separate event, and the increased conductor resistivity due to the increased temperature is taken into account. The
cooling of the conductors during the reclosing interval is considered as well. In addition, a comparison of the results given by the
proposed method to the results of the method of the IEC 60865-1
standard is made. Furthermore, alterations to the time parameters of the recloser operation cycle are performed in order to
investigate its effect on the generated temperature rise. Finally,
the proposed method was compared to an exact numerical solution of the heating process.
II. PROPOSED METHOD
Many papers have been published on the thermal effects of
short circuits on cables and conductors [7][9]. However, the
temperature rise due to multiple consecutive short circuits has
not been addressed. Multiple short circuits are common on MV
lines protected by reclosers.
International standard IEC 60865-1 gives the equivalent
and the equivalent duration of multiple
thermal current
according to the following
temporally-close short circuits
relationships:

(1)
This approach does not take the increased conductor temperature into account and, consequently, the increased ohmic conductor resistance met by the th short circuit due to the previous
ones. Therefore, it can be concluded that the th short circuit
releases more heat per unit current. In addition, the cooling between each short circuit is not taken into account. These omissions create the need for a revised method for the calculation of
temperature rises caused by multiple short circuits.

0885-8977/$31.00 2012 IEEE

HALEVIDIS et al.: THERMAL EFFECT OF THE RECLOSER OPERATION CYCLE ON BARE OVERHEAD CONDUCTORS

569

Fig. 2. Considered MV line.

where

Fig. 1. Method application and conductor temperature evolution.

The proposed method treats each short circuit as a separate

event whose effects are a function of the conditions at the beginning of the recloser operation. The TR from the th short circuit is dependent on the conductor temperature acquired from
the previous short circuits. Specifically, the application of the
method for the case of a recloser is shown in Fig. 1.
The resistivity (from which the temperature rise can be calculated) after the th recloser operation is given by [6]
(2)
where is the resistivity, is the temperature,
is the specific heat capacity, is the density, is the linear temperature
coefficient, and th is the equivalent thermal current density as
given by IEC 60865-1.
For temperatures greater than 140 C, the linear dependence
of resistivity on temperature is not accurate, as it underestimates
the actual value [10]. This underestimation leads to smaller
short-circuit TRs and, consequently, in an overestimation of
the conductors capability to handle the thermal effect of the
short circuit. For this reason, a third-order curve, approximating
experimental results, is used [11]. The curve is given as
(3)
Since the resistivity is calculated from (2), (3) is solved for
the conductor temperature at the end of the recloser operation.
The linear temperature coefficient used in (2) is the derivative of
the third-order curve evaluated for the conductor temperature at
the start of the th short circuit.
The conductors, during the reclosing interval, cool down
(nonadiabatic process). The cooling decreases the resistivity
and should be taken into account. The differential equation describing the cooling time evolution with heat-loss mechanisms
through radiation and natural convection is [12]

is the conductor heat capacity per unit length (in

),
and are the heat losses through natural convection and radiation, respectively (in watts per meter),
is
is air density at
the conductor diameter (in millimeters),
), is the emissivity coefficient, and
film temperature (in
the ambient temperature (in C). The rate of solar heat
gain is considered equal to zero since it is negligible compared
to the heat-loss rate.
The differential equation is solved numerically, as it contains
nonlinear terms. The numerical solution used a time step equal
to 0.02 s (sufficiently small compared to the reclosing interval).
The solution of the differential equation gives the initial temperature and resistivity for the next short circuit.
In conclusion, the first step of the method is to calculate
the resistivity at the end of the th short circuit using (2). For
the second step, the temperature is derived from the resistivity
through the inversion of (3). Finally, the solution of (4) gives
th short circuit. The
the temperature at the start of the
resistivity is given by (3). This procedure is repeated until the
final line opening.
III. CASE STUDY
As a case study, this work examines a typical overhead MV
line composed of three horizontally positioned conductors.
The conductors used are aluminum conductors steel reinforced
(ACSR) of 50, 95, and 199.4 mm equivalent copper cross sections. The conductor characteristics are shown in the Appendix.
The line is protected by a recloser and its length is equal to
90 km (Fig. 2). The nominal voltage of the line is 20 kV. The
transmission transformer is rated at 50 MVA 150/20 kV with
equal to 0.2 and its ohmic
a per unit impedance voltage
is equal to 0.006.
component
The network upstream of the high-voltage (HV) transformer
bars is considered infinite. Consequently, the fault is a far-fromgenerator one. Although these assumptions lead to greater calculated fault currents and temperature rises than the actual one,
this approximation can be considered acceptable. The short-circuit current calculations are performed according to the international standard IEC 60909 [13].
(equal to the
The initial symmetrical short-circuit current
steady-state current , as a far-from-generator fault is considered) is given by

(5)

(4)

where is the voltage factor,

is the nominal voltage,
is
the total fault impedance, is the distance from the transformer,
and
are the ohmic resistance and reactance per unit

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 27, NO. 2, APRIL 2012

Fig. 3. Extremely inverse timecurrent recloser curve.

length of the conductor, respectively, and

and
are the
ohmic resistance and reactance of the HV transformer after the
use of the impedance correction factor, respectively.
The time current curve (TCC) chosen for the recloser is an extremely inverse (EI) per IEEE standards. The pickup current setting was chosen to be equal to 160 A. This choice was made
so that the inrush current of the medium-to-low-voltage transformer at the end of the line does not cause nuisance tripping,
and the minimum short-circuit current is 1.5 times the pickup
current setting. The TCC is given according to

Fig. 4. Temperature rise calculation flowchart.

(6)

is the tripping time; is the short-circuit current;

where
, , , and are constants; and is the time-dial setting which
is set differently for the fast and delayed tripping operations of
the recloser. The recloser operation cycle consists of one fast
and three delayed tripping operations, and the reclosing interval
is set equal to 2 s. The recloser curves are shown in Fig. 3.
The thermal equivalent short-circuit current th is given by
[6] and [13]
(7)
where is the factor for the heat effect of the ac component
(equal to unity as the fault is a far-from-generator one), and
is the factor for the heat effect of the dc component.
The factor is given by [6] and [13]
(8)
and
are the
where is the fundamental frequency, and
, respectively.
ohmic and reactive components of
The thermal effect calculation flowchart of the recloser operation cycle is shown in Fig. 4. The procedure is iterative, consisting of four iterations (one for each tripping operation).
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The results given by the proposed method are shown in
Figs. 57. The proposed method results in greater conductor

Fig. 5. Temperature rise of an ACSR conductor of 50 mm equivalent copper

cross section due to the recloser operation cycle (extremely inverse TCC).

TRs compared to the results of the IEC method in the first

100 m and smaller TRs further down the line for the ACSR
50 mm . This can be explained through (2). The IEC method
uses the aggregate fault duration as an exponent. The proposed
method uses the sum of the temperature rises. The ratio of the
two methods is approximately given by
(9)

The TR ratio of the two methods is shown in Fig. 8. It can be

concluded that the IEC method underestimates the conductor
temperature rise from multiple short circuits for fault locations
for which (9) is less than unity. In the case study, this holds for

HALEVIDIS et al.: THERMAL EFFECT OF THE RECLOSER OPERATION CYCLE ON BARE OVERHEAD CONDUCTORS

Fig. 6. Temperature rise of an ACSR conductor of 95 mm equivalent copper

cross section due to the recloser operation cycle (extremely inverse TCC).

571

Fig. 9. Temperature rise ratio between the constant  method and proposed
method.

Fig. 7. Temperature rise of an ACSR conductor of 199.4 mm equivalent

copper cross section due to the recloser operation cycle (extremely inverse
TCC).
Fig. 10. Extremely inverse and moderately inverse timecurrent recloser
curves.

short-circuit currents of this method compared to the proposed

one (due to the constant conductor resistance). The TR ratio of
the two methods is shown in Fig. 9.
Subsequently, the great degree of dependence of conductor
TR on the time current curve is shown. For this purpose, a moderately inverse (MI) timecurrent curve is chosen. Constants ,
, and are equal to 0.02, 0.0515, and 0.114, respectively. (The
curves are shown in Fig. 10.) The time current curve is given as
Fig. 8. Temperature rise ratio between the IEC method and the proposed
method.

distances from the HV substation of less than 100 m, and for the
ACSR, it is 50 mm . For the rest of the line length, the ratio is
greater than unity. In addition, the ratio is greater than unity for
the larger conductors (95, and 199.4 mm ) for the entire length
of the line.
The constant resistivity method follows the methodology of
the proposed method without taking into account the increase
in resistivity. This method results in smaller temperature rises
compared to the proposed method for faults near the transmission transformer as the increased heat release per ampere
th) is neglected. However, for greater distances, it results
in greater temperature rises. This can be attributed to the greater

(10)
The results of the methods are shown in Figs. 1113. The
relative behavior of the methods is identical to the one exhibited in Figs. 57 (EI timecurrent curve). It should be noted that
for faults in the first 100 m, temperatures greater than 660 C
(melting point of aluminum) appear for the ACSR 50 mm and,
consequently, are not plotted in Fig. 11. In addition, the temperature rises significantly increase compared to the ones associated
with an EI recloser. Based on the aforementioned results, it can
be concluded that the use of an extremely inverse relay is suggested when the line is protected by means of a recloser.
The temperatures reached by ACSR conductors of 50 mm
equivalent copper cross section exceed the 180 C limit for aluminum strands. In addition, the repeated automated attempt of

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Fig. 11. Temperature rise of an ACSR conductor of 50 mm equivalent copper

cross section due to the recloser operation cycle (moderately inverse TCC).

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 27, NO. 2, APRIL 2012

the time interval between successive operations and the number

of fast to delayed tripping operations.
Initially, the recloser operation cycle is altered from one fast
and three delayed tripping operations to two fast and two delayed. When an extremely inverse TCC recloser is used, the
maximum temperature decrease is less than 1 C (namely, 0.73,
0.09, and 0.02 C for the ACSR 50, 95, and 199.4 mm conductors, respectively). Consequently, this alteration can be considered insignificant. When a moderately inverse TCC recloser is
used, the alteration yields greater results. The maximum temperature decrease reaches 98, 8.49, and 0.96 C for the ACSR 50,
95, and 199.4 mm conductors, respectively. It should also be
noted that due to this alteration, the melting point of aluminum
is not reached by the ACSR 50 mm conductor.
Second, the time duration between successive operations (reclosing interval) is altered. This change affects the cooling time.
The reclosing interval is increased from 2 to 10 s. Since cooling
is proportional to the temperature difference between the conductor and the environment, raised to a power greater than unity,
the effect of this alteration is expected to be greater for a moderately inverse TCC. Indeed, in the case of an extremely inverse
TCC, the maximum temperature decrease is 8.57, 0.6, and 0.05
C while in the case of a moderately inverse TCC, the maximum
decrease is 25.08, 1.21, and 0.08 C for the ACSR 50, 95, and
199.4 mm conductors, respectively.
V. NUMERICAL METHOD

Fig. 12. Temperature rise of an ACSR conductor of 95 mm equivalent copper

cross section due to the recloser operation cycle (moderately inverse TCC).

Finally, the proposed method is compared to a numerical solution of the differential equation describing the heating time
evolution of the conductor due to the short-circuit current. The
is [8]
analytic equation of the short-circuit current
(11)
(12)
(13)

Fig. 13. Temperature rise of an ACSR conductor of 199.4 mm equivalent

copper cross section due to the recloser operation cycle (moderately inverse
TCC).

the recloser and the following manual attempts of the repair

crew to re-energize the line (in order to locate the position of
the fault) lead to a temperature rise many times greater than the
permissible. These temperatures could cause a significant decrease of the conductors tensile strength and an increase of line
sag leading to possible violation of safety distances [14]. In addition, due to thermal expansion, the aluminum strands relax favoring conductor corrosion. Thus, ACSR conductors of the 50
mm equivalent copper cross section are deemed unsuitable for
the first few kilometers downstream of the HV substation.
Furthermore, an attempt is made to investigate the effect of
the recloser time parameters on the temperature rise, by altering

where is the time constant of the circuit, is the short-circuit

phase angle, and is the short-circuit current making angle.
is taken equal to zero since this choice maximizes the Joule
Integral of the short-circuit current (if its duration is greater than
approximately 0.01 s for a system frequency of 50 Hz) [8] and,
consequently, maximizes the temperature rise.
The differential equation describing the adiabatic heating
process is given as
(14)
where

is the heat capacity per unit length (in

) of the conductor aluminum content. The choice of
using the heat capacity only due to the aluminum content is
made in order to conform to the proposed method (and the IEC
method) which utilizes the aluminum cross section to calculate
the equivalent thermal current density th [6].
This differential equation is solved numerically, similar to
the cooling differential equation. The numerical solution of the
heating differential equation utilized a time step equal to 0.0001

HALEVIDIS et al.: THERMAL EFFECT OF THE RECLOSER OPERATION CYCLE ON BARE OVERHEAD CONDUCTORS

Fig. 14. Temperature rise of an ACSR conductor of 50 mm equivalent copper

cross section due to the recloser operation cycle as calculated from the numerical
and proposed methods (extremely inverse TCC).

573

Fig. 16. Temperature rise as a function of the equivalent thermal current density
for the numerical, IEC, and proposed methods (ACSR conductor of 50 mm
equivalent copper cross section, extremely inverse TCC).

TABLE I
CONDUCTOR CHARACTERISTICS

VI. CONCLUSION

Fig. 15. Temperature rise of an ACSR conductor of 95 mm equivalent copper

cross section due to the recloser operation cycle as calculated from the numerical
and proposed methods (extremely inverse TCC).

s, significantly smaller than the one used for the solution of the
cooling equation. This was necessary due to the periodic component of the short-circuit current. The conductor resistance per
is updated in every time step. Thus, the nuunit length
merical method takes into account the increase of the conductor
ohmic resistance during the short-circuit event.
It should be noted that the solution of the differential equation describing the cooling time evolution (during the reclosing
intervals) is achieved as in the proposed method.
The results of the numerical method compared to the proposed method for the ACSR 50, and 95 mm conductors,
are shown in Figs. 14 and 15. The proposed method results
in greater temperature rises, compared to the results of the
numerical method, in the first 1.25 km, and 0.15 km from
the substation, and smaller rises further down the line, for the
ACSR 50 mm , and 95 mm conductors, respectively. In the
case of the ACSR 199.4 mm conductor, the numerical method
results in greater temperature rises for the entire line length.
The proposed method achieves good agreement with the
exact numerical method. In addition, the proposed method
overestimates the temperature rise, compared to the numerical
method, when the equivalent thermal current density is great
(i.e., when the conductor cross section is small and the fault is
close to the substation), erring on the side of caution (Fig. 16).

In this paper, a new method for the calculation of the temperature rise from multiple successive short circuits, to which
bare overhead conductors are subjected, was developed. This
method treats each short circuit as a separate event and takes into
account the cooling between successive short circuits. The proposed method, when compared to the IEC 60865 method, yields
greater temperature rises near the HV substation and smaller further away for the ACSR 50 mm conductor, and smaller temperature rises for the entire length of the line for the ACSR 95 and
199.4 mm conductors.
In addition, the effects of the recloser time parameters on the
temperature rise were studied. Namely, it was found that a moderately inverse timecurrent curve results in much greater temperature rise compared to an extremely inverse TCC. Also, the
reclosing interval was found to have a small effect on the temperature rise while the number of fast to delayed tripping operations can have a significant effect.
APPENDIX
The characteristics of the conductors used in the case study
are presented in Table I.
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 27, NO. 2, APRIL 2012

[3] J. M. Gers and E. J. Holmes, Protection of Electricity Distribution Networks, Herts. London, U.K.: Inst. Elect. Eng., 2004, p. 109.
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2000.
Constantinos D. Halevidis (M10) was born in
Athens, Greece, in 1987. He is currently pursuing the
Ph.D. degree in electrical computer engineering at
the National Technical University of Athens, Athens.
His research interests are diverse, including topics
such as power transmission and distribution, highvoltage testing, electric contacts, and ELF fields.

Constantinos G. Karagiannopoulos received the

Ph.D. degree in mechanical and electrical engineering from the National Technical University of
Athens, Athens, Greece.
His working experience includes posts in the
industry and in a great number of projects in the
field of civil constructions. Since 2005, he has
been a Professor in the School of Electrical and
Computer Engineering, National Technical University of AthensIndustrial Electric Devices and
Decision Systems Division. His research activities
and technical experience involve electric measurements and high field effects,
high-voltage engineering, electrical insulating materials and apparatus, as well
as electromechanical installations in industry and buildings.

Perikles D. Bourkas is Professor Dr. Dipl. Eng.

(Electrical Engineer) at the National Technical
University (NTU) of Athens, Athens, Greece. His
working experience includes positions such as
President of the Technical Council of the Ministry
of Health, Director of the Technical Services at the
Ministry of Health, and Director Electrical Engineer
of the Athens General Hospital. He has also been
an electrical engineer in various industries (AGET
Ltd., Metallotechnica-Electra-Westinghouse Ltd.,
Co-Mechanical Engineer in Telestar AEBE, etc.).
Currently, he is Professor Emeritus at the NTU of Athens. His technical
experience and research activities involve highvoltage engineering, electrical
measurements, electrical insulating materials, electromechanical installations
in industry and buildings, hospital installations, and biomedical technology.