10/2/2017

EE453: Power System Protection and

Stability

Farhan Mahmood, PhD

Department of Electrical Engineering
UET, Lahore

May 23, 2016

Outline

Introduction to Protective Relaying and Operating Principles of

Relays

• Multilayered structure of power systems

• Neutral grounding of power systems
• Power system bus configuration
• Substation configuration
• Nature of relaying
• Elements of power system protection

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Multilayered Structure of Power Systems

• A power system is made up of interconnected

equipment that can be said to belong to one of the three
layers from the point of view of the functions performed.
• Power Apparatus: generates, transforms, and
distributes the electric power to the loads.
• Control equipment: helps to maintain the power
system at its normal voltage and frequency, generates
sufficient power to meet the load, and maintains
optimum economy and security in the interconnected
network.

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Multilayered Structure of Power Systems

• Protection equipment: acts to open- and closed-circuit breakers (CBs), thus

changing the structure of the power system. The response time of protection
functions is generally faster than that of the control functions.

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Neutral Grounding of Power Systems

• As grounding practices affect fault current levels, they have a direct bearing upon
relay system designs.
• The main reason for operating the power system ungrounded is that there is no
ground fault current.
• As the vast majority of faults on a power system are ground faults, service
interruptions due to faults on an ungrounded system are greatly reduced.
• As the number of transmission lines connected to the power system grows, the
capacitive coupling of the feeder conductors with ground provides a path to ground,
and a ground fault on such a system produces a capacitive fault current.

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Neutral Grounding of Power Systems

• Coupling capacitors to ground C0 provide the return path

for the fault current.
• The interphase capacitors 1/3C1 play no role in this fault.
• When the size of the capacitance becomes sufficiently
large, the capacitive ground fault current becomes self-
sustaining, and does not clear by itself.
• It then becomes necessary to open the CBs to clear the
fault, and the relaying problem becomes one of detecting
such low magnitudes of fault currents.
• In order to produce a sufficient fault current, a resistance is
introduced between the neutral and the ground.

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Neutral Grounding of Power Systems

• Ungrounded systems produce good service continuity, but are subjected to high
overvoltages on the unfaulted phases when a ground fault occurs.
• When a ground fault occurs on phase a, the steady-state voltages of phases b
and c become √3 times their normal value and transient overvoltages become
correspondingly higher.
• This places additional stress on the insulation of all connected equipments.
• For system operating at a voltage higher than 100 kV, the fault-induced
overvoltages begin to assume a critical role in insulation design, especially of
power transformers.
• At high voltages, it is therefore common to use solidly grounded neutrals (more
precisely “effectively grounded”).

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Neutral Grounding of Power Systems

• Such systems have high ground fault currents, and each ground fault must be
cleared by CBs.
• In certain heavily meshed systems, particularly at 69 and 138 kV, the ground fault
current could become excessive because of very low zero-sequence impedance at
some buses.
• If ground fault current is beyond the capability of the CBs, it becomes necessary to
insert an inductance in the neutral in order to limit the ground fault current to a safe
value.
• In several LV networks, a very effective alternative to ungrounded operation can be
found if the capacitive fault current causes ground faults to be self-sustaining. This is
the use of a Petersen coil, also known as the ground fault neutralizer (GFN).

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Neutral Grounding of Power Systems

• Consider the symmetrical component representation of a ground fault on a power

system that is grounded through a grounding reactance of Xn.

• If 3Xn is made equal to Xc0 (the zero-sequence capacitive reactance of the

connected network), the parallel resonant circuit formed by these two elements
creates an open circuit in the fault path, and the ground fault current is once again
zero.

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Neutral Grounding of Power Systems

• No CB operation is necessary upon the occurrence of such a fault, and service

reliability is essentially the same as that of a truly ungrounded system.
• The overvoltages produced on the unfaulted conductors are comparable to those of
ungrounded systems, and consequently GFN use is limited to system voltages below
100 kV.
• Petersen coils have found much greater use in several European countries than in
the United States.

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Power System Bus Configuration

• The general layout of the power network

has a profound influence on the protective
relaying.
• Radial power system is a single-source
arrangement with multiple loads.
• Typically used for distribution system,
operating voltages below 100 kV.
˗ Simple, and economical to build
˗ Low service reliability
˗ Easy to protect

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Power System Bus Configuration

• Network power system has multiple sources

and multiple loops between the sources and the
loads.
• Typically used for sub-transmission and
transmission systems (operating voltages above
100 kV).
˗ More flexilibity
˗ High service reliability
˗ Difficult to protect as magnitude of fault
current changes as network configurations
changes

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Power System Bus Configuration

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Substation Configuration

• Substations are designed for reliability of service and flexibility in operation and to
allow for equipment maintenance with a minimum interruption of service.
• Most common bus bar arrangements are,
˗ Single bus, single breaker scheme
˗ Double bus-double breaker scheme
˗ Main-and-transfer bus scheme
˗ Double bus-single breaker scheme
˗ Ring bus scheme
˗ Breaker-and-a-half scheme

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Single Bus, Single Breaker Scheme

Advantages:
• Simple in design
• Lowest cost

Disadvantages:
• Failure of bus or any circuit breaker results
in the shutdown of entire substation
• Difficult to do maintenance
• Bus cannot be extended without de-
energization of substation

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Double Bus-Double Breaker Scheme

Advantages
• Each circuit has two dedicated breakers.
• Flexible in permitting feeder circuits to be
connected to either bus.
• Any breaker can be taken out of service for
maintenance.
• High reliability.
Disadvantages:
• Most expensive
• Would lose half the circuits for breaker failure if
the circuits are not connected to both buses

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Main-and-Transfer Bus Scheme

Advantages:
• Low initial and ultimate cost.
• Any breaker can be taken out of service for
maintenance.
Disadvantages:
• Requires one extra breaker for the tie bus.
• Switching is complicated when maintaining
a breaker.
• Failure of bus or any breaker results in
shutdown of entire substation.

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Double Bus-Single Breaker Scheme

Advantages:
• Permits some flexibility with two buses.
• Either bus may be isolated for maintenance.
• Circuit can be transferred readily from one bus
to the other using bus-tie breaker and isolators
Disadvantages:
• One extra breaker is required for the tie bus.
• Four switches are required per circuit.
• Bus protection scheme may cause loss of
substation when it operates if all circuits are
connected to that bus.

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Double Bus-Single Breaker Scheme

Disadvantages (Continued):
• Line breaker failure takes all circuits connected to that bus out of service.
• Bus-tie breaker failure takes entire substation out of service.

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Ring Bus Scheme

Advantages:
• In ring bus scheme, the bus bars and
breakers. are connected in series to form a
ring.
• Requires only one breaker per circuit.
• Each circuit is fed by two breakers.
• Low initial and ultimate cost.
• Flexible operation for breaker maintenance.
• Any breaker can be removed for
maintenance without interrupting load.

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Ring Bus Scheme

Disadvantages:
• If a fault occurs during breaker maintenance period, the ring can be separated into
two sections.
• Protective relaying circuitry is complex
• Breaker failure during a fault on one of the circuits causes loss of one additional
circuit owing to operation of breaker-failure relaying.

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Breaker-and-a-half Scheme

Advantages (Continued):
• Simple and flexible operation.
• High reliability.
• 3 breakers for 2 circuits, so one and a
half breaker per line.
• Failure of bus side breakers removes
only one circuit from service.
• Simple operation; no disconnect
switching required for normal operation
• Either main bus can be taken out of
service at any time for maintenance.

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Breaker-and-a-half Scheme

Advantages (Continued):
• Bus failure does not remove any feeder circuits from failure.
• Widely used in EHV systems.

Disadvantages:
• One and a half breaker per circuit.
• Relaying and automatic reclosing are involved since the middle breaker must be
responsive to either of its associated circuits.

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Nature of Relaying

• The function of protective relaying is to detect defective lines (or apparatus) or

abnormal conditions and to initiate corrective actions.
• Requirements
˗ Define the undesirable conditions
˗ Remove only the faulted equipment and to maintain the un-faulted portion of the
system.
• In general, relays do not prevent damage to equipment:
˗ Their purpose is to limit, to the extent possible, further damage to equipment
˗ To reduce stress on other equipments
˗ To minimize danger to people

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Nature of Relaying

Reliability, Dependability, and Security

• Reliability is the ability of an equipment to perform its intended task within the
prescribed conditions.
• Relays have two alternative ways in which they can be unreliable:
˗ Relays may fail to operate when required
˗ Relays may operate when they are not expected to do so
• A reliable relaying system must be dependable and secure
˗ Dependability “ The ability of relay to operate correctly for all faults for which it is
required to operate.”
˗ Security “The ability that the relay will not operate incorrectly for any fault
outside its protected zone.”

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Nature of Relaying

Better to have high dependability and less security than vice versa.

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Nature of Relaying

Selectivity and Zones of Protection

• The property of security of relays, that is, the requirement that they not operate for
faults for which they are not designed to operate.
• This implies that the relays should be selective, that is, the ability to correctly
determine that which part of the power system is faulted.
• The security and selectivity of the relays is defined in terms of regions of a power
system called zones of protection.
• Zone of protection of a relay is the place or the distance that the relay can protect
easily.
• The boundary of a zone is usually defined by a CT and a CB.
˗ CTs provide ability to detect faults
˗ Circuit breakers CB provide ability to isolate fault

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Nature of Relaying

• Zones of protection must meet following requirements:

˗ All power system elements must be encompassed by at least one zone.
˗ For a fault inside a zone, all circuit breakers in that zone open to clear the fault.
˗ Zones of protection must overlap to prevent any system element from being
unprotected.
˗ For a fault in the overlapping region, all circuit breakers of both zones are
tripped and a larger part of the power system will be lost from service. Thus, the
overlapping should be kept as small as possible.

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Nature of Relaying

• Zones of protection may be closed and open.

˗ Closed zone is one where all power apparatus entering the zone is monitored
at the entry points
˗ In an open zone, monitoring does not occur, and the zone is defined by the
level of fault current, that is, the start will be defined but the extent will depend
on measurement of the system quantities and will therefore be subject to
variation, owing to changes in system conditions and measurement errors.
• Coordination in protection systems is designed to meet the goal of having the
breaker closest to the fault opens first, and the breaker farthest from the fault opens
last.

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Nature of Relaying

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Nature of Relaying

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Nature of Relaying

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Nature of Relaying

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Nature of Relaying

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Nature of Relaying

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Nature of Relaying

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Nature of Relaying

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Nature of Relaying

Speed
• Speed is the ability of relaying system to initiate operation in the shortest possible
time.
˗ Instantaneous: No intentional time delay
˗ Time-Delay: Intentional time delay is inserted
˗ High Speed: Operates less than 3 cycles on a 60 Hz system
˗ Ultra High speed: Operates less than 4 ms.

Sensitivity
• The relaying system should be sensitive to detect smallest fault current that may
occur during abnormal conditions.

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Nature of Relaying

Economy
• The ability of relaying system to function at minimum cost.

Simplicity
• The ability of relaying system to function and to operate with minimum equipment
and circuitry.

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Nature of Relaying

Primary and Back-up Protection

• The main protection system for a given zone of protection is called the primary
protection system. It operates in the fastest time possible and removes the least
amount of equipment from service.
• A protection system may fail to operate and, as a result, fail to clear a fault. It is
thus essential that provision be made to clear the fault by some alternative
protection system, also called as back-up protection.
• On EHV systems, it is common to use duplicate primary protection systems in
case an element in one primary protection chain may fail to operate. However, the
cost of duplicate equipment may not be justified.

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Nature of Relaying

• The alternate to duplications is the backup relaying. Backup relays are generally
slower than the primary relays and remove more system elements than may be
necessary to clear a fault.
• Backup relaying may be installed locally, that is, in the same substation as the
primary protection, or remotely.
• Remote backup relays are completely independent of the relays, transducers,
batteries, and CBs of the protection system they are backing up.
• Local backup relaying does not suffer from these deficiencies, but it does use
common elements such as the transducers, batteries, and CBs, and can thus fail to
operate for the same reasons as the primary protection.

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Nature of Relaying

• Breaker failure relays are a subset of local backup relaying that is provided
specifically to cover a failure of the CB.
• The breaker failure relay system consists of a separate timer that is energized
whenever the breaker trip coil is energized and is de-energized when the fault
current through the breaker disappears.
• If the fault current persists for longer than the timer setting, a trip signal is given to all
local and remote breakers that are required to clear the fault.

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Nature of Relaying

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Nature of Relaying

Single-phase and Three-phase Tripping and Reclosing

• In US, the practice is to trip all three phases of the faulted power system element for
all types of fault.
• In several European and Asian countries, it is a common practice to trip only the
faulted phase for a phase-to-ground fault, and to trip all three phases for all
multiphase faults on transmission lines.
• Since, majority of the faults are transient in nature, the power system can be
returned to its prefault state if the tripped CBs are reclosed as soon as possible.
• Reclosing can be manual or automatic.
• Clearly, manual reclosing is too slow for the purpose of restoring the power system
to its prefault state when the system is in danger of becoming unstable.

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Nature of Relaying

• Automatic reclosing of CBs is initiated by dedicated relays for each switching device,
or it may be controlled from a substation or central reclosing computer.
• Some of the common interlocks for reclosing are the following,
˗ Voltage check
˗ Synchronizing check
˗ Equipment check

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Elements of a Protection System

• Define and understand power system faults

• Measure and monitor system parameters V, I, f through transducers → current and
potential transformers
• Detection schemes → relays
• Action equipment → circuit breakers

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Elements of a Protection System

Battery and DC Supply

• In substations, the tripping power, as well as the power required by the relays is
usually provided by the station battery and cannot be obtained from the AC system.
• For example, a close-in three-phase fault can result in zero AC voltage at the
substation AC outlets.
• The battery is permanently connected through a charger to the station AC service.
• The charger is of a sufficient volt-ampere capacity to provide all steady-state loads
powered by the battery.
• Usually, the battery is also rated to maintain adequate DC power for 8 – 12 hours
following a station blackout.

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Elements of a Protection System

Circuit Breaker (CB)

• The CB isolates the fault by interrupting the current at or near a current zero.
• At the present time, an EHV CB can interrupt fault currents of the order of 105 A at
system voltages up to 800 kV.
• It can do this as quickly as the first current zero after the initiation of a fault, although
it more often interrupts at the second or third current zero.
• As the CB contacts move to interrupt the fault current, there is a race between the
establishment of the dielectric strength of the interrupting medium and the rate at
which the recovery voltage reappears across the breaker contacts.
• If the recovery voltage wins the race, the arc reignites, and the breaker must wait for
the next current zero when the contacts are farther apart.

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Elements of a Protection System

• From the design point of view, circuit breaker is classified into two types:
˗ Line-tank
˗ Dead-tank
• In the live tank design, the interrupting chamber is located in an insulator bushing
which is at the line voltage above ground, that is, the interrupter unit in live tank
breakers is not grounded during operation.
• The interrupting chamber should therefore be provided with insulated supports.
• Live tank circuit breakers are cheaper than dead tank and require less space. Since
the entire equipment is at line potential, it is not possible to incorporate CTs that have
their secondary windings essentially at the ground potential.

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Elements of a Protection System

• It then becomes necessary to design the CTs with their own insulating system, as
separate free-standing devices.
• In dead tank circuit breakers, the interrupting chamber is at ground potential.
• As the incoming and outgoing conductors are taken through insulated bushings, it is
possible to place current transformers on them.

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Elements of a Protection System

Live-tank Design Dead-tank Design

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THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION

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