1.

Introduction

Practically all electrical and relaying signals are derived from current and voltage signals.
Since, relaying hardware works with smaller ranges of current (in amperes not KA) and
voltages (volts and not KV), real life signals (feeder or transmission line currents) and
bus voltages have to be scaled down to lower levels and fed into the relays. This job is
done by current and voltage transformers (CTs and PTs). CTs and PTs also electrically
isolate the relaying system from the actual power apparatus. Thus,
 CT and PTs are the sensors for the relay.
 CT and PT are the ‘ears’ and the ‘eyes’ of the protection system. They listen to
and observe all happening in the external world. Relay itself is the brain which
processes these signals and issues decision commands implemented by circuit
breakers, alarms etc

Clearly, the quality of the relaying decision depends upon the ‘faithful’ reproduction of
the primary signals by CTs and PTs. In this module, we will learn a lot more about these
devices. In particular, we will answer the following questions.
 How is CT different from the normal transformer?
 How to decide the CT specs?
 How to ascertain that CT is functioning as desired? (performance analysis)?

2. Equivalent Circuit

To begin with, equivalent circuit of a CT is not very different from that of the regular
transformer (fig 1). However, a fundamental difference is that while regular power
transformers are excited by the voltage source, a current transformer has current source
excitation. A primary winding of the CT is connected in series with the transmission. The
load on the secondary side is the relaying burden and the lead wire resistance. Total load
in ohms that is introduced in series with d with the transmission line is insignificant and
hence, the connection of the CT does not alter the current in the feeder or the power
apparatus at all. Hence, it is reasonable to assume that CT primary is connected to a
current source. With this mode, the CT equivalent circuit will look as shown in Fig 2. The
remaining steps in modeling are as follows:
 Since, impedance in series with the current source can be neglected, we can
neglect the primary winding resistance and leakage reactance in CT modeling.
 We can shift the magnetizing impedance which conventionally shown in the
primary side to the secondary side of the ideal transformer.
After application of the above steps the CT equivalent circuit is as shown in the figure 3.
Note that the secondary winding resistance and leakage reactance is not neglected as it
will affect the performance of CT. The total load impedance on the secondary side is the
sum of relay burden, lead wire resistance and leakage impedance of secondary winding.
Therefore, the voltage developed in the secondary winding depends upon these
parameters directly. The secondary voltage developed of CT has to be monitored because
as per the transformer emf equation, the flux level in the core depends upon it:
E 2  4.44 fN 2 m
where  m is the peak sinusoidal flux developed in the core. If Bm corresponding to this
flux is above the knee point, it is more or less obvious that the CT will saturate. During
saturation, the CT secondary winding cannot replicate the primary current and hence, the
performance of the CT deteriorates. Thus, we conclude that in practice, while selecting a
CT we should ascertain that it should not saturate on the sinusoidal currents that it
would be subjected to. To achieve this, we have to limit the burden on the secondary side
to a reasonably small value. This is more easily done with numerical relays than the solid
state or electromechanical relays and this is an important advantage of numerical relays.
In other words, numerical relays reduce burden on the sensors and hence, this as well
contributes to the improved performance of the relaying system.
We can further, simply the equivalent circuit of the CT by transferring the current
source (through the ideal transformer) to the secondary side. Thus, the equivalent circuit
of the CT is as shown in Fig 4.

2.1 Equivalent circuit of saturated CT

One of the major problems faced by the protection systems engineer is the saturation of
CT on large ac currents and dc offset current present during the transient. When the CT is
saturated, the primary current source cannot be reflected to the secondary side. In other
words, we can open circuit the current source. Also, the magnetizing impedance falls
down during saturation. The transformer behaves like an air core device, with negligible
coupling between the primary and secondary. The high reluctance due to the air path
implies that the magnetizing impedance (inductance) falls down. The corresponding
equivalent circuit is shown in Fig 5.

3. Classification of CTs

The CTs have been classified into following types:

 Measurement CTs
 Protection CTs

The measurement grade CTs have much lower VA capacity than the protection grade CTs.
They are not expected to give linear response (secondary current a scaled replica of the
primary current) during large fault currents.
In contrast, from the protection grade CTs the expectations is that of linear
response up to 20 times the rated current. Typically, CT secondary rated current is
standardized to 1A or 5A (more common). If the corresponding primary rated current is
say 100A secondary. However, it would be unreasonable to assume that the linear
response will be independent of the net burden on the CT secondary. For simplicity, we
refer to the net impedance on the secondary side (neglecting magnetizing impedance) as
the CT burden. It is quite obvious that the driving force ( E 2 ) required to drive the
primary current replica will increase as this burden increases. If this voltage exceeds the
designer’s set limits, then the CT core will saturate and hence linear response will be lost.
Hence, when we say that CT will give linear response up to 20 times the rated current,
there is also an implicit constraint that the CT burden will be kept to a low value. In
general, the manufacturer specifies a voltage limit on the secondary (e.g., 100 V) up to
which linear response is expected. If the CT burden causes, this voltage to be exceeded,
CT saturation results.

3.1 ANSI/IEEE classification

ANSI/IEEE standards classify CTs into two types:

 Class T CTs
 Class C CTs

3.1.1 Class T CTs

Typically, class T CTs are wound type CTs with one or more primary turns wound on a
core. It is associated with high leakage flux in the core. Because of this, the only way to
determine it’s performance is by test. In other words, the standard performance curves
cannot be used with this types of CTs. Fig 6 shows one such experimentally calibrated
curve for a CTs. The letter ‘B’ indicates the burden in ohms to which the CT is subjected.
It is seen that when burden is less than 0.1 ohms, the CT meets the linear performance
criterion up to 20 times. However, as the burden increases to 0.5 ohms, the corresponding
linearity criteria is not met till the end. At 4 ohms burden, there is significant deviation
from the linear response. A general rule of thumb, is that one should try to keep the
CT burden as low as possible.
Ratio Error: The CT performance is usually gauged from the ratio error. The ratio
error is the percentage deviation in the current magnitude in the secondary from the
expected value. On other words, if the current measured in the secondary is | I ' 2 | , the
| I '2 | I 2
expected current is | I 2 | , then the ratio error is given by;  100%. The current in
I '2
the secondary is also phase shifted. However, phase shift errors are not considered to
large and significant in CTs. It is expected that ratio error for protection grade CTs will be
maintained with in  10% .

3.2 Class C CT

Class C CTs are more accurate bar type CTs. For such CTs, the performance can be
evaluated from the standard charts. In such CTs, the leakage flux from the core is kept
very small. Also, the ratio error is maintained with  10% for standard operating
conditions. For such CTs, voltage rating on the secondary is specified up to which linear
response is guaranteed. For example, a class C CT specification could be as follows:
200:5 C 100. The labeling scheme indicates that we are dealing with a 200:5 class C CT
will provide linear response up to 20 times rated current provided the burden on the
secondary is kept below (100/(5  20)  1) ohm. A corresponding class T CT may be
labeled as 200:5 T 100.mmm
For class C CTs, additional standard chart for E 2 versus excitation current ( I e ) on
the secondary side is available. This provides the protection engineer to do more exact
calculations for performance analysis (refer Fig 7).
4.