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Papers and Summaries On Stator Earth Fault Protection

This document discusses various methods for stator earth fault protection in generators. It describes how undetected earth faults can cause damage and revenue loss. Several protection schemes are outlined, including differential protection using current differences, modified differential, and 100% stator winding protection using low frequency signal injection. Harmonic-based protection methods using the third harmonic are also summarized. The document compares various protection methods based on criteria like sensitivity, speed, security and complexity. It provides an overview of generator stator ground fault issues and recommended protection schemes.

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Mfundo Ngobese
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122 views3 pages

Papers and Summaries On Stator Earth Fault Protection

This document discusses various methods for stator earth fault protection in generators. It describes how undetected earth faults can cause damage and revenue loss. Several protection schemes are outlined, including differential protection using current differences, modified differential, and 100% stator winding protection using low frequency signal injection. Harmonic-based protection methods using the third harmonic are also summarized. The document compares various protection methods based on criteria like sensitivity, speed, security and complexity. It provides an overview of generator stator ground fault issues and recommended protection schemes.

Uploaded by

Mfundo Ngobese
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Papers and summaries on stator earth fault protection.

1. 100% Stator Ground Fault Protection of Alternators by Low


Frequency Injection and Using Real Power Signal.

 Undetected Earth fault may result in 1. Loss in operating Revenue 2. Millio-ns in damage. 3.
Generators are critical in power systems, they supply power to all energy consuming
machines.
 Maintainance dependent on the size and complexity of the alternator.
 Generator needs to be sent for rewinding.
 Protection system ought to be robust so that it does interrupt the system for minor faults but
should be sensitive enough to detect a range of faults.
 Coil inter turn to short circuit(not phase to earth)?
 Protective relay—device that detects faults and triggers a circuit breaker to isolate the
defective element/ area. Measures electrical quantities and measures there from their normal
values.

 Possible solutions
a) Differential protection.
 Uses the flow of current for fault detection. Under normal conditions the
current flowing at two ends is equal but under fault these currents differ.
 The difference between the current is directed to flow in the relay coils and
thus at an adequate difference the coils energise and trip circuit braker. This
is called the merz price circulating current system.
 Limitation: Fault current is limited by the neutral line resistisatnce.
 When the fault occurs near to the neutral the current that flows is very small
and not sufficient to trip breaker/energise the relay colis. Only protects 80 to
85% of the stator winding. So one could utilise a relay with low
setting(meaning that will trip breaker at this small currents but this dies not
provide the desired stability).
b) Modified differential protection
 As an alternative to the merz price method one may utilize the modified
differential protection method.
 Protects a greater portion of the of the stator windings.
c) 100% stator winding protection
 Low frequency signal is injected into the secondary winding of the grounding
transformer.
 The voltage signal is first passed through a low pass filter.
 Machine is protected is even when the machine is offline.
 Relay measures current on the grounded wire of the secondary side of the
grounding transformer. This current increases during faults.
 For a special case of grounding capacitance and neutral resistance the relay
ought to a component inside that acts specifically on the real part of the
current.
 For fault and non-fault conditions the power relay shows a significant
difference in power. So a power relay would be a very good option even at
high reactance and winding resistance values.
d) Power relay
e) Using the real component of the current resulting from low harmonic injection to
decide on fault and non-fault conditions. This is necessary for the conditions when the
grounding capacitance between the phase and grounding is very large for a
corresponding small grounding transformer resistance. The difference between the
neutral line current for fault and non-fault conditions becomes to small and makes it
very hard to set the relay pickup value. As alternative to a relay that uses the current
value to decide whether to initiate action employ (d).

2. Understanding Generator Stator Ground Fault and Protection


Schemes

 Criteria for comparing methods: Sensitivity, speed, security, availability, complexity and
setting considerations.
 NEMA(National Electrical Manufacture Association) does not allow fault currents to exceed
the fault current generated by a 3 phase fault in “standard generators”. Thus to limit the fault
current generated by the single phase to fault an impedance is required at the neutral line in
order to maintain the integrity of the stator windings.
 High impedance grounding of transformer as a middle ground of two extremes of the solid
grounded and ungrounded.
 The distribution transformer transforms the small resistance connected across it’s secondary
to a high value resistance in the primary side which is between the neutral and ground.

 The charging current of the capacitance to ground(between line and ground) during a fault is
dependent of the distribution transformer 𝑘𝑉𝐴 rating as well as the distribution transformer
resistor.
 So the resistor is selected such that the current in the transformer primary windings during
an EARTH FAULT matches the current in the capacitance. Also helps avoid ferroresonance.

 Several harmonics are produced by the generator, but the protective element utilises the
fundamental to detect the fault and attenuate other harmonics.

 Big concerns as coverage changes considerably at start up and shut down. Look reference 8.

 Harmonic voltages are created in the phases of the generator in normal operating conditions
due to the limitations of the physical design of the machines.
METHODS:

I.Basic scheme (59N)


 Uses the 59N relay. Which measures how much voltage develops on the
Grounding transformer resistor because of the NEUTRAL FAULT current.
 Only protects about 95% of the windings.
II.USING THIRD HARMONIC SHIFT (27N3)
 Generators generate third harmonic in normal operating conditions. A portion of
this 3rd harmonic voltage appears across the neutral of the generator. During a
fault this voltage experiences a voltage shift. So, a 27N3 relay is utilised to detect
this shift as a means to fault event identification.
 This method is only used to complement the first to improve the coverage to
100%.
 Challenges with this method, to effectively apply this method it requires that the
machine not be protected at certain operation points (e.g @ no load).
III. Method 2 using third harmonic (DIFFERIAL RELAYS), 59D3
 Using the difference between the to 3rd harmonic components to ease the
relay pickup value.
 Do note that the third harmonic profiles of some machines can be different
for synchronised and non-synchronised and this therefore ought to be
considered when doing the pickup value calculation. Especially for machines
that have synchronisation breaker.

IV.100% Stator Protection using Subharmonic injection
 Only applies to high impedance grounded transformers.
 If a machine is started with an energised field the 64S relay is usually
disabled because at some point between start up and desired operating
point the frequency of the generated voltage is the same as the injected
voltage. So the scheme that injects more than one frequency prevails
since it can even protect at start up since of the multiple signals only 1 is
supressed.
 Inject a known AC signal and measure the current it generates.
3. BOOK 3
 See table one for the recommended protection schemes corresponding to types of
transformer connections.
 Upon the detection of a fault it is not recommended to immediately shut down the
machine because it might cause a shock to the mechanical systems.
 It is therefore recommended that upon the detection of a fault an alarm is initiated
and the proper unloading is first done to first

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