Switchgear and protection

Motivation: Power System Protection is a fascinating subject. 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. While
designing the protective schemes, one has to understand the fault characteristics of the individual
power system elements. One should also be knowledgeable about the tripping characteristics of
various protective relays. The job of the protection engineer is to devise such schemes where
closest possible match between the fault characteristics and the tripping characteristics is
obtained. The design has to ensure that relays will detect undesirable conditions and then trip to
disconnect the area affected, but remain restrained at all other times. However, there is statistical
evidence that a large number of relay trippings are due to improper or inadequate settings
than due to genuine faults. It is therefore necessary that students should be equipped with sound
concepts of power system protection to enable them to handle unforeseen circumstances in real
life.

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1. Introduction to switchgear

The term switchgear, used in association with the electric power system, or grid, refers to
the combination of electrical disconnects, fuses and/or circuit breakers used to isolate electrical
equipment. Switchgear is used both to de-energize equipment to allow work to be done and to
clear faults downstream. Switchgear is already a plural, much like the software term
code/codes, and is never used as switchgears.

2. Classification of switchgear: Switch gears can be classified in to 3 types based on voltage

1. LV switchgear – up to 1 KV
2. MV switchgear – above 1KV to below 33 KV
3. HV switchgear – above 33 KV
3. Nature and causes of faults
 4. Effects of faults

5. Need for protective systems

An electrical power system consists of generators, transformers, transmission and
distribution lines, etc. short circuits and other abnormal conditions often occur on a power
system. The heavy current associated with short circuits is likely to cause damage to
equipment if suitable protective relays and circuit breakers are not provided for the protection of
each section of the power system. Short circuits are usually called faults by power engineers
.Strictly speaking the term ‘fault ’simply means defect. Some defects, other than short circuits,
are also termed as faults. For example, the failure of conducting path due to a break in conductor
is a type of fault.
 If a fault occurs in an element of a power system, an automatic protective device is
needed to isolate the faulty element as quickly as possible to keep the healthy section of the
system in normal operation. The fault must be cleared within a fraction of a second. If a short
circuit persists on a system for a longer, it may cause damage to some important sections of the
system. A heavy short circuit current may cause fire. It may spread in the system and damage a
part of it.

The system voltage may reduce to a low level and individual generators in power system
or groups of generators in different power stations may lose synchronism. Thus, an uncleared
heavy short circuit may cause the total failure of the system.

A protective system includes circuit breakers, protective relays and transducers (CT’s and VT’s)
to isolate the faulty section of power system from the healthy sections.

Circuit breakers can disconnect the faulty element of the system when it called upon to do so
by the protective relay. CB performs the interruption function

The function of protective relay is to detect and locate a fault and issue a command to the
circuit breakers to disconnect the faulty element. It is a device which senses abnormal conditions
on a power system by constantly monitoring electrical quantities of the systems, which differ
under normal and abnormal conditions.The basic electrical quanties which are likely to change
during abnormal conditions are current,voltage,phase angle( directon)and frequency .the
protective relays uses one or more of these quantities to detect abnormal conditions on the power
system .

Transducers (CT’s and PT’s) are used to reduce currents and voltages to lower values and to
isolate protective relays from the high voltages of power system.

Protection is needed not only against short circuits but also against any other abnormal
conditions which may arise on power system. a few examples of other abnormal conditions are
over speed of generators and motors, overvoltage, under frequency, loss of excitation
,overheating of stator and rotor of alternator etc. Protective relays are also provided to detect
such abnormal conditions and issue alarm signals to alert operators or trip circuit breaker.
 6. 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. (In non-directional over-current protection, as well as in differential
protection, the PT will not be required.)

At this stage, we can consider the relay 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(s) 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 below
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 undcr protection and pass it on to the protective
relays. While doing this, they lnsulate the low-voltage protective system (both personnel and
protective apparatus) from the high-voltage power system

a) Current Transformer: The current transformer has two jobs to do. Firstly, it steps down
the current to such levels that it can be easily handled by the relay current coil. The
standard secondary current ratings used in practice are 5 A and 1 A. This frees the relay
designer from the actual value of primary current. . Secondly, it isolates the relay
circuitry from the high voltage of the EHV system.
b) Voltage Transformer: The voltage transformer steps down the high voltage of the line to
a level safe enough for the relaying system (pressure coil of relay) and personnel to
handle. The standard secondary voltage on line-to-line basis 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

Circuit Breaker

The circuit breaker is an electrically operated switch, which is capable of safely making, as well
as breaking, short-circuit currents. The circuit breaker is operated by the output of the associated
relay. When the circuit breaker is in the closed condition, its contacts are held closed by the
tension of the closing spring. When the trip coil is energized, it releases a latch, causing the
stored energy in the closing spring to bring about a quick opening operation

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

7. General properties of a protective system

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 be zero -in on the faulty element and
isolate it, 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. The protection engineer has to strike a
balance between these two incompatible requirements

4. Reliability and Dependability:

A protective system is of no use if it is not reliable. There are many ways in which reliability can
be built into the system. Good engineering judgement plays a great part in enhancing the
reliability of the protective system. In general, it is found that simple systems are more
reliable. Systems which depend upon locally available information, tend to be more reliable
and dependable than those that depend upon the information at the remote end. However, in spite
of best efforts to make the system reliable, we cannot rule out the possibility of failure of the
(primary) protection system. Therefore, we add features like back-up protection to enhance the
reliability and dependability of the protective system.