A review on protective relays’ developments and trends

Abdelkader Abdelmoumene

Hamid Bentarzi
Signals and Systems Laboratory, IGEE, Boumerdes University, Algeria

Abstract able events in power system have been prescribed.

One of the most complex disciplines in electrical The history of protective relays refers to more than
engineering is power system protection which a century ago. Some literatures say that the first pro-
requires not only the proper understanding of the tective relay was produced in 1902 (Singh, 2007;
different components of a power system and their Pathirana, 2004), others refer to 1905 (Lundqvist,
behaviours but also a good knowledge and analysis 2001; Rebizant et al., 2011). But whatever the date,
of the abnormal circumstances and failures that can the hard fact is that protective relays knew an
occur in any element of a power system. Moreover, important revolution since the beginning of the
the rapid changing and development in relays prin- twentieth century. In 1909, induction disk type
ciples as well as in their technologies are additional inverse time current relays came into practice and
factors that oblige those people working in the field the concept of directional discrimination of faults
to expand and update continuously their knowl- was incorporated in these protective relays (Singh,
edge. In this paper, we shed light in the evolution of 2007).
protective relays since the onset of electrical energy Differential relay was developed using pilot
to currently. We try also to foresee the future wires for conveying information from one end to
prospects and trends in this area. the other end of the line (Pathirana, 2004). In 1923,
distance relay appeared in the form of impedance.
Keywords: digital / numerical relay, protective relay, Later, the induction type mho relays with very high
developments, trends, reliability precision came into practice. After that, polarized dc
relays with better accuracy and sensitivity were
developed in 1939 (Singh, 2007; Warrington,
1968).
All of the relays developed until the 1940’s were
1. Introduction electromechanical relays. These devices achieved
Protective relaying is an integral part of any electri- very high precision and sensitivity in the form of
cal power system. The fundamental objective induction cup mho relays and perform well for the
of system protection is to quickly isolate a problem missions attributed to them.
so that the unaffected portions of a system The early 1940’s showed the way into the devel-
can continue to function. Protective relays are the opment of relays using electronic devices (Singh,
decision-making devices in the protection 2007). These relays are known as static relays or
scheme. These relays underwent, through more solid state relays because they didn’t contain a mov-
than a century, important changes in their function- ing parts. The advent of transistor circuits opened
alities and technologies. Each change brings with it the door to the development of several new protec-
odds and improvement in both technical and finan- tion concepts like block spike comparator, phase
cial aspects. In this paper, we shed light in the evo- comparator, etc.
lution of protective relays since the onset of electri- The major advantage of these relays was that no
cal energy to currently. We try also to foresee the moving parts were needed for performing their
future prospects and trends in this area. intended functions. The operating speeds of these
relays were also more than the speed of their
2. Historical background electromechanical counterparts and, their reset
Since the early days of the onset of electrical power times were less than the reset times of electro-
the need of devices to prevent or limit the undesir- mechanical protective relays. In addition to these

Journal of Energy in Southern Africa • Vol 25 No 2 • May 2014 91

benefits, the solid-state relays could be set more were introduced to the market (Sachdev et al.,
precisely (Sachdev et al., 2009). 2009). These devices reduced the product and
This generation of static relays became quickly installation costs drastically and has converted
very popular and found a large place in power sys- microprocessor relays to powerful tools in modern
tem protection. substations.
In 1988, the Virginia Tech research team devel-
oped the first prototype phasor measurement unit
(PMU) based relay (Phadke, 2002). This technique
allows measuring, beside the magnitudes of the
electrical entities, the phase angles (Zhang, 2010)
and could offer new information that can be used to
improve the functional logic of protective relays.
In the 1990s, the notion of integrated protection
and control became very popular and benefited full
advantage of microprocessor technology, for pro-
tection, monitoring, control, disturbance and event
handling, and communication. The relays’ volumes
as well as wiring were significantly reduced due to
the integration of functions and the use of serial
communication.

Figure 1: Example of electromechanical relay

(disc type time over-current)

Figure 3: Modern multi-functions numerical

relay manufactured by deep sea electronic
(DSE, 2014)

Perhaps the most attracting feature of these

numerical relays was the ability of communication
Figure 2: Example of a solid state relay that offered new horizons for protection and protec-
manufactured by Crydom tion related applications.
(Crydom, 2012) At the present time, there are many advanced
communication techniques which can be used to
During the peak famous period of these solid improve protection, control, speed outage restora-
state relays, another generation of protective tion, operation analysis, maintenance functions and
devices was being set in way to see the light; it was planning. This communication facilities allow engi-
the digital technology. neer operating, testing, maintenance and accessing
The use of Digital computers and microproces- real-time and historical relay information to the
sors for protective relaying purposes has been neighbours (Wang et al., 2002; Eissa, 2002).
engaging the attention of research since the late The information is the basic constituent in the
1960s (Singh, 2004). The first serious proposals for protection scheme. The important issue is commu-
using digital computers came from Rockefeller in nicating and processing information in an efficient
1969 (Rockefeller, 1969; Singh, 2004). Much litera- and economical way. The key element in a com-
ture reported digital relays shortly afterwards. But munication system is the physical medium used in
the first microprocessor based relays offered as conveying information through the system. There
commercial devices was only in 1979 (Sachdev, are many different types of communication media
1979). In that era, the efforts were concentrated to such as twisted pair cable, coaxial cable, fibre optic
obtain a very high speed fault clearance. Different cable and wireless communication (Ali et al., 2007).
techniques and algorithms were proposed for The wireless networks are by far the most popu-
achieving this objective. These include common lar choice for new network algorithm.
hardware platforms, configuring the software to Nowadays, modern digital relays draw on the
perform different functions (Sachdev et al., 2009). experience and technical resources of the previous
In the late 1980s, Multifunction digital relays series and also featured compactness and less

92 Journal of Energy in Southern Africa • Vol 25 No 2 • May 2014