10/9/2016

NEW DELHI

Electrical Engineering Substation Components with Working

AHMEDABAD

BANGLORE

CHENNAI

HYDERABAD

MUMBAI

PUNE

Major Components in Electrical Substations

and their Workings

The power system is a constituent of power generation,

transmission and distribution systems. For all the power
system operations, substations are required for their course
of action. Substations are congregation of electrical
equipment through which consumers get supply of electrical
power from generating stations. By varying the voltage levels
or frequency or any other aspects, the required electrical
Substation

quantity can be altered in substations to provide quality

power to consumers.
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Electrical Substation
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Based on the application of substations, they are classified into different types: Generation substation, Indoor
substation, Outdoor substation, Pole mounted substation, Switching substation, Transmission substation,
Converter substation and Distribution substation. In rare cases like wind farm power generation system,
multiple hydroelectric and thermal power plants one can observe the collector substation which is used for
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Electrical Engineering Substation Components with Working

transferring power from multiple turbines into one transmission unit.

The substation is an assembly of the following major electrical equipments:

Electrical Power transformers

Instrument transformers
Conductors& Insulators
Isolators
Bus bars
Lightning arresters
Circuit breakers
Relays
Capacitor banks and miscellaneous equipment

Electrical Power Transformer

Electrical Power transformer

A static electrical machine used for transforming power from one circuit to another circuit without changing
frequency is termed as Power transformer. The transformers are generally used to step down or step up the
voltage levels of a system for transmission and generation purpose. These transformers are classified into
different types based on their design, utilization purpose, installation methods, and so on.

Instrument Transformers:

Instrument transformers

The current and voltage transformers are together called as the Instrument transformers.

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Current Transformer
Current transformer is used for the measurement of the alternating current by taking samples of the higher currents
of the system. These reduced samples are in accurate proportions with the actual high currents of the system. These
are used for installation and maintenance of the current relays in substations for protection purpose which are normally
have low-current ratings for their operation.

Potential Transformer
Potential transformer is quite similar to the current transformer, but it is used for taking samples of high
voltages of a system for providing low-voltage to the relays of protection system and also to the low-rating
meters for voltage measurement. From this low-voltage measurement, the actual systems high voltage can
be calculated without measuring high voltages directly to avoid the cost of the measurement system.

Conductors

Conductors

The material or object that obeys the electrical property conductance (mostly made of metals such as
aluminum and copper) and that allows the flow of electric charge is called conductor. Conductors permit free
movement of the flow of electrons through them. These are used for the transmission of power or electrical
energy from one place (generating station) to another place (consumer point where power is consumed by
the loads) through substations. Conductors are of different types and mostly aluminum conductors are
preferred in practical power systems.

Insulators

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Insulators

The metal which does not allow free movement of electrons or electric charge is called as an insulator.
Hence, insulators resist electricity with their high resisting property. There are different types of insulators such
as suspension type, strain type, stray type, shackle, pin type and so on. A few types of insulators are shown in
the above figure. Insulators are used for insulation purpose while erecting electric poles with conductors to
avoid short circuit and for other insulation requirements.

Isolators

Isolators

Isolator is a manually operated mechanical switch that isolates the faulty section or the section of a conductor
or a part of a circuit of substation meant for repair from a healthy section in order to avoid occurrence of more
severe faults. Hence, it is also called as a disconnector or disconnecting switch. There are different types of
isolators used for different applications such as single-break isolator, double-break isolator, bus isolator, line
isolator, etc.

Bus Bars
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Bus bars

The conductor carrying current and having multiple numbers of incoming and outgoing line connections can
be called as bus bar, which is commonly used in substations. These are classified into different types like
single bus, double bus and ring bus.

Lightening Arresters

Lightening Arresters

The substation equipments such as conductors, transformers, etc., are always erected outdoor. Whenever
light surges occur then, a high-voltage pass through these electrical components causing damage to them
(either temporary or permanent damage based on the amount of voltage surge). Therefore, to avoid this
difficulty, lightening arresters are placed to pass the entire lightening surges to earth. There are other
arresters which are used to ground the switching surges called as surge arresters.

ROHM/ SiC Schottky Diodes

Broad lineup as many as 60 products 650V(6A to 40A) / 1200V(5A to 40A)

Go to rohm.com

Circuit Breakers
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Circuit Breakers

For the protection of substation and its components from the over currents or over load due to short circuit or
any other fault the faulty section is disconnected from the healthy section either manually or automatically. If
once the fault is rectified, then again the original circuit can be rebuilt by manually or automatically. Different
types of circuit breakers are designed based on different criteria and usage. But in general mostly used
circuit breakers are Oil circuit breaker, Air circuit breaker, SF6 circuit breaker, Vacuum Circuit Breaker, and
so HOME
on.

Relays
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Relays

Relays are used for disconnecting the circuits by manual or automatic operation. Relay consists of the coil
which is excited or energized and such that making the contacts of relay closed activates the relay to break or
make the circuit connection. There are different types of relays such as over current relays, definite time over
current relays, voltage relays, auxiliary relays, reclosing relays, solid state relays, directional relays,inverse
time over current relays, microcontroller relays, etc. The above figure shows some basic relays and their
operation.
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Capacitor banks
A Capacitor bank is a set of many identical capacitors connected in series or parallel within a enclosure and
is used for the power factor correction and basic protection of substation.These capacitor banks are acts as
a source of reactive power, and thus, the phase difference between voltage and current can be reduced by
the capacitor banks. They will increase the ripple current capacity of the supply. It avoids undesirable
characteristics in the power system. It is the most economical method for maintaining power factor and of
correction of the power lag problems.

Capacitor banks

Emerging trends in technological development have created advancement in the substation installation and
maintenance. For example, SCADA, supervisory control and data acquisition technique made it possible to
control a substation automatically from a remote location. For more data regarding miscellaneous
components and technologies in substations, post your queries in the comments section below.
Photo Credits:
Instrument transformer by blogspot
Insulators by ecideluxe
Isolators by kpoly
Relays by geofex
Capacitor banks by directindustry
Bus bar by openstreetmap
Substation by relaypowersystems
Distribution Substation by blogspot
Electrical Power transformer by answcdn
Conductors by howequipmentworks
Lightening Arresters by osha
Circuit Breakers by blogspot
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ROHM/ SiC Schottky Diodes

Broad lineup as many as 60 products 650V(6A to 40A) / 1200V(5A to 40A)

Go to rohm.com

About Tarun Agarwal

Tarun Agarwal is the Chief Customer Support Officer at Edgefx Technologies Pvt
Ltd. He has 8 years of experience in Customer Support, Operations and
Administration.

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