ELEC4612: Transients in power systems

The University of New South Wales

School of Electrical Engineering

and Telecommunications

Power Systems Transients

Toan Phung
2012

Transients in power systems:

 Occurs due to sudden change in circuit conditions,
e.g. switch operates or fault occurs. Network
changes from one steady-state to another.
 Under AC, energy transferred cyclically between Ls
and Cs in circuit. Sudden change in circuit results in
redistribution of energy to satisfy new condition.
This, however, cannot happen instantaneously.
 Transient period is very short (s to ms range)
 Canproduce excessive voltages or currents →
damage to equipment

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ELEC4612: Transients in power systems

Internal Transients:
 switching operations (load break switches, circuit
breakers, disconnectors), short-circuit faults
 cause of most power system transients.

External Transients:
 overvoltage induced by lightning strikes in vicinity
of transmission lines
 current surges due to direct lightning strikes on
line conductors.

Transient Recovery Voltage (TRV):

 generated by operation of CBs during current
interruption for fault clearance or even just load
current breaking.

L = system inductance between fault and source;

C = total distributed capacitance of system

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ELEC4612: Transients in power systems

Current chopping:
 occur when CBs are interrupting small inductive
currents such as transformer magnetizing current.
 current interrupted before natural current zero. As a
result, inductance still contains substantial stored
energy (which is zero at natural current zero).
Dissipation of this energy will cause an enhanced
and additional voltage transient at breaker
terminals.
 incontrast to normal TRV, transient voltage due to
current chopping is not limited to a peak of 2Vm: it
can potentially be much higher.

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ELEC4612: Transients in power systems

Offset current during faults

When S closes at time t=0 to simulate fault, resulting current is:

DC offset
current transient

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ELEC4612: Transients in power systems

Purely
inductive

Purely
resistive

Alternative Transient Program (ATP)

 H.W. Dommel created Electromagnetic Transients Program

(EMTP) in early 1960s.
 Later when worked at BPA (Bonneville Power Administration,
USA) and together with S. Meyer, made EMTP source code
public-domain prior to its commercialization in 1984.
 Based on this public-domain EMTP, S. Meyer and T. Liu
developed the Alternative Transient Program (ATP).
 ATP is not in public domain. Licensing is required. Contact
local ATP-EMTP users group.

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ELEC4612: Transients in power systems

Alternative Transient Program (ATP)

 Operating principles and capabilities:
 Predict electrical variables (voltage, current) as functions
of time following some disturbances
 Use trapezoidal rule to convert differential equations of
network components into algebraic equations and solve in
the time domain, e.g.

Alternative Transient Program (ATP)

 Operating principles and capabilities:
 Also provide frequency-domain harmonic analysis and
calculation of frequency response of phasor networks.
 Large library of components:
 Basic components: R, L, C, sources, switches

 Other non-linear components: surge arresters, power

electronic devices, etc.
 Power system components: rotating machines,
transformers, transmission lines, cables.
 Interface to program modules MODELS and TACS to
enable modelling of control systems and components
with nonlinear characteristics.

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ELEC4612: Transients in power systems

Alternative Transient Program (ATP)

Structure of user’s ATP input data file

Alternative Transient Program (ATP)

Example of ATP input data file

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ELEC4612: Transients in power systems

ATPDraw version 5.6:

 MS-Windows graphical preprocessor to ATP version of
Electromagnetic Transients Program (EMTP).
 User constructs circuit using mouse and selecting
components from menus. Extensive circuit editing facilities.
 ATPDraw then generates ATP input file. ATP and plotting
programs can be called from ATPDraw.
 Developed by Hans K. Høidalen (Norwegian Uni. of Science
and Technology), financed by BPA.
 ATPDraw program is royalty free and can be downloaded
from several Internet sites: EEUG, JAUG users group.

Software installation – A simple procedure:

 Step 1: run InstATP121.exe to install Basic set of programs
into a directory, e.g. E:\ATP:
 ATP/MinGW (20-Aug-2008)

 ATP Launcher (Ver 1.16)

 ATPDraw (Ver 5.3)

 PlotXY (Dec-2007)

 GTPPLOT (20-Aug-2008)

 Associations

 Step 2: run InstATP121_add.exe to install Additional set

 Step 3: run InstATP121_lib.exe to install Library set
 Step 4: run ATPDraw57_install to install ATPDraw updater
 Step 5: run PlotXY-Nov09 to install new PlotXY into E:\ATP

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ELEC4612: Transients in power systems

Files and sub-folders in ATPDraw folder:

 Files required to run ATPDraw:

 ATPDraw.exe
 ATPDraw.scl (standard component library)
 ATPDraw.chm (help file)
 User’s own library components and include files

 User’s circuit is stored in a project file “.acp”

 ATPDraw creates “.atp” file as input to ATP
simulation

User’s interface

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ELEC4612: Transients in power systems

Build and Edit circuits:

 Operating the mouse:

 Left click
 Right click
 Left click and hold
 Left double click
 Where: on object, connection, node, open area
 Generally:
 left button for selecting objects or connecting
nodes
 right button for specifications of object/node
properties

Build and Edit circuits:

 Useful edit operations:

 Undo, Redo
 Cut, Copy, Paste, Duplicate, Delete
 Rotate right, Rotate left, Flip horizontal
 Rubber band (stretch connection)
 Select all, Select inside, Select group of objects
 Zoom In/Out

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ELEC4612: Transients in power systems

Build and Edit circuits:

 Steps in building a new circuit :

 Create a new project file (.acp)
 Select components required from library
 Specify data to components
 Connect components to form circuit
 Assign node names, specify grounding
 Save project file
 Modify miscellaneous parameters (ATP | Settings)
 Run ATP to create ATP input file (.atp)

Circuit objects:
 To show Component Selection
menu, click right mouse button in
an empty circuit window space
 Component dialog box:
 Attributes
 Characteristic

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ELEC4612: Transients in power systems

Circuit objects:
 Probes & 3-phase:
 probes for node voltage, branch
voltage, current, TACS, Models
output monitoring
 3-phase transposition objects
 splitter (coupling between 3-
phase and single phase circuits)
and collector.
 ABC/DEF Reference objects for
specifying master node for phase
sequence

6-6 phase
RL coupled line

Exa_2.acp: example of three-phase circuit

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ELEC4612: Transients in power systems

Circuit objects:
 Branch Linear:
 resistor()
 capacitor with damping resistor (F if
Copt=0)
 inductor with damping resistor (mH if
Xopt=0)
 RLC in series
 3-phase RLC in series, independent
values in phases
 3-phase RLC in series, Y coupling
 3-phase RLC in series,  coupling
 capacitor with initial condition
 inductor with initial condition

Circuit objects:
 Branch Non-linear:
 Current dependent resistor
 Time dependent resistor
 Current dependent inductor with or
without initial flux
 True non-linear current dependent
inductor with or without initial flux
 Pseudo-nonlinear hysteretic inductor
with or without initial flux
 Current dependent resistance in
exponential form
 3-phase current dependent resistance
 TACS / MODELS controlled time
dependent resistor

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ELEC4612: Transients in power systems

Circuit objects:
 Switches:
 Single or 3-phase time controlled.
Multiple closing/openings.
 3-phase time controlled. Independent.
 Voltage controlled.
 Diode. Uncontrolled.
 Valve/thyristor/triac.
 TACS/MODELS controlled.
 Current measuring switch.
 Statistic switch.
 Systematic switch.
 Ideal or nonlinear resistance with
forward resistance and snubbers

Circuit objects:
 Sources:
 AC
 DC
 Ramp or slope-ramp
 Double exponential
 Voltage or current
 Single or 3-phase
 Ungrounded or grounded
 TACS/MODELS controlled
 CIGRE/Heidler/Standler type
 User-defined time characteristics

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ELEC4612: Transients in power systems

Circuit objects:
 Steady-state:
 RLC present only during initialization, t<0
 CIGRE single-phase load
 CIGRE three-phase load
 HFS source: harmonic frequency source
 Linear RLC for HFS study
 Kizilcay F-dependent: frequency
dependent branch in s or z domain
 Load flow PQ: component with active &
reactive power restriction (load bus)
 Load flow UP: component with voltage &
active power restriction (generator bus)
 Load flow TQ: component with angle &
reactive power restriction

Plotting programs for ATP:

 Execute ATP simulation: TPBIG.EXE
 Simulation results stored in “.pl4” file.
 Windows-based plotting programs:
 ATP Analyzer
 GTPPLOT
 PlotXY
 others

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ELEC4612: Transients in power systems

Plotting program PlotXY and PlotXWin:

 No installation procedure, simply copy PlotXY.exe or

PlotXWin.exe to directory of choice, eg. E:\atp\PlotXY
 Graphical User Interface
 Up to 8 plots per sheet, 8 files on same sheet.
 Up to 5 simultaneous plot windows
 plots versus time, X-Y plots
 Linear or logarithmic scales
 Factors, offsets and zoom support
 automatic axis scaling and labelling
 Cursor to display numerical values
 printing and Windows Metafile export facilities

Plotting program PlotXY and PlotXWin:

 PROCEDURE:
 Run program → Data Selection Window
 Click ‘Load’ button to load a ‘.pl4’ file
 Click on variables to select for plotting
 Set factors and offsets if desired.
 Click ‘Plot’ button to plot → Plot Window
 Click ‘Save’ to export to ASCII file (.adf) or MatLab format
 Plot Window functions:
 Title, Customise plot, Manual scale, Show cursor,
Mark, Write WMF file, Copy to clipboard, Print

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ELEC4612: Transients in power systems

Example: lightning impulse generator

Pasoni & Villa 400kV/20kJ impulse generator (UNSW HV lab)

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ELEC4612: Transients in power systems

1.2/50s

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ELEC4612: Transients in power systems

Resources and references:

 ATP-EMTP user groups (www.emtp.org)

 Join ATP-EMTP-L mailing list
 ATPDraw version 5.6 for Windows Users’ Manual
 Plotting Programs PlotXY and PlotXYWin – Short
Description and Operating Instructions, October 2005
 GTPPLOT: Plotting Program for ATP Output Files, Orlando
Hevia, Canadian/American EMTP User Group
 Users Guide to Models in ATP, Laurent Dube, 1996
 EMTP Theory Book

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