Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
CONTENTS/INDEX
insulation failure, flashover, physical damage or human error. These faults, may either be three phase in nature involving all three phases in a symmetrical manner, or may be asymmetrical where usually only one or two phases may be involved. Faults may also be caused by either short-circuits to earth or between live conductors, or may be caused by broken conductors in one or more phases. Sometimes simultaneous faults may occur involving both short-circuit and broken conductor faults (also known as open-circuit faults).
fault location (Fault energy = 1 x Rf x t where t is time) Danger to operating personnel (Flash products) The heavy current due to shortcircuit causes excessive heating which may result in fire or explosion. Sometimes short-circuit takes the form of an arc and causes considerable damage to the system.
electromechanical transients may cause instability of the interconnected system by pulling synchronous machines out of synchronism
Faults - Types
Faults can be broadly classified into two main areas which have been designated:
Active Faults : Active fault is when actual current
flows from one phase conductor to another or alternatively from one phase conductor to earth . This type of fault can also be further classified into two areas, i) Solid fault ii)incipient fault Passive Faults: Passive faults are not real faults in the
true sense of the word but are rather conditions that are stressing the system beyond its design capacity.
fault current. The information obtained from the fault studies are used to select the rating and sizes of protective devices such as:
EDSA
ETAP CYME
TRANSIENT FAULT
A transient fault is a fault that
is no longer present if power is disconnected for a short time. Many faults in overhead powerlines are transient in nature. Typical examples of transient faults include:
momentary tree contact
bird or other animal contact lightning strike conductor clash
PERMANENT FAULT
Permanent faults, as the name
implies, are the result of permanent damage to the insulation. In this case, the equipment has to be repaired and reclosing must not be entertained.
SYMMETRIC FAULT
That fault on the power system which gives rise to symmetrical fault currents (i.e. equal fault currents in the lines with 120 displacement) is called a symmetrical fault.
SYMMETRIC FAULT
The symmetric, symmetrical or balanced
fault affects each of the three-phases equally In transmission line faults, roughly 5% are symmetric This is in contrast to an asymmetric fault, where the three phases are not affected equally In practice, most faults in power systems are unbalanced
ASYMMETRIC FAULT
An asymmetric or unbalanced fault does not affect each
of the three phases equally. Common types of asymmetric faults, and their causes: line-to-line - 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 - 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 - two lines come into contact with the ground (and each other), also commonly due to storm damage
ASYMMETRIC FAULT
Thus as mentioned there are three ways in which unsymmetrical faults may occur in a power system: (i) Single line-to-ground fault (L G) (ii) Line-to-line fault (L L) (iii) Doube line-to-ground fault (L L G)
symmetrical components is used to determine the currents and voltages on the occurrence of an unsymmetrical fault. of equal magnitude, displaced by 120 & 240o respectively and having the phase sequence of abca. of equal magnitude displaced by 240 & 120o respectively, having phase sequence of acba.
CIRCUIT BREAKERS
A circuit breaker is a piece of equipment which can (i) make or break a circuit either manually or by remote control under normal conditions (ii) break a circuit automatically under fault conditions (iii) make a circuit either manually or by remote control under fault conditions
FUSES
A fuse is a short piece of metal,
inserted in the circuit, which melts when excessive current flows through it and thus breaks the circuit. Fuse is the simplest current interrupting device for protection against excessive currents. In general, fuses may be classified into : (i) Low voltages fuses (ii) High voltage fuses
PROTECTIVE RELAYS
A protective relay is a device that
detects the fault and initiates the operation of the circuit breaker to ioslate the defective element from the rest of the system. Having detected the fault, the relay operates to close the trip circuit of the breaker. This results in the opening of the breaker and disconnection of the faulty circuit.
CONCLUSION
REFERENCES