EEE 471

Switchgear and Protection

Dr. Muhammad Quamruzzaman

Professor
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
CUET
 Course Syllabus

Purpose of power system protection, Introduction to circuit interruption and protection.

Terminologies and general characteristics of relays and breakers.

Circuit breakers: control systems, arc extinction, recovery voltage. Air, oil, air blast,
vacuum, SF6 and high voltage DC circuit breakers. Selection criteria, testing of circuit
breakers.

Relays: overcurrent, directional, differential, distance, sequence, pilot-wire and carrier

current protection.

Busbar arrangement, grounding.

Unit protection: generator, motor, transformer, bus and line protection.

Static Relays: Introduction to Analogue and Digital static relays. Static overcurrent,
differential and distance protection.

Microprocessor based relays.

Switchgear

The apparatus used for switching, controlling and

protecting the electrical circuits and equipments is
known as switchgear.

A switchgear essentially consists of switching and

protecting devices such as
- Switches….Air-break switch, oil switch, isolators
- Fuses
- circuit breakers
- Relays
- CT and PT etc.
 Switchgear
Switches:
 Air-break switch

- It is designed to open a circuit under load. The contacts open in

the air. Air is used as arc quenching medium.

- In order to quench the arc that occurs on opening such a switch,

special arcing horns are provided. Arcing horns are pieces of
metals between which arc is formed during opening operation.
As the switch opens, these horns are spread farther and farther
apart. Consequently, the arc is lengthened, cooled and
interrupted.

- Generally used outdoor for circuits of medium capacity such as

lines supplying an industrial load from a main transmission line or feeder.

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 Switchgear
Switches:

 Oil switch

The contacts of such switches are opened under oil, usually

transformer oil.

The effect of oil is to cool and quench the arc that tends to form
when the circuit is opened.
These switches are used for circuits of high voltage and large
current carrying capacities.

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 Switchgear
Switches:
 Isolator
- It is essentially a knife switch and is designed to open a circuit
under no load. Its main purpose is to isolate one portion of the
circuit from the other and is not intended to be opened while
current is flowing in the line.

- Such switches are generally used on both sides of circuit

breakers in order that repairs and replacement of circuit breakers
can be made without any danger.

- They should never be opened until the circuit breaker in the

same circuit has been opened and should always be closed
before the circuit breaker is closed. 6
 Switchgear
Ordinary fuse with Tumbler switch
simplest form of switchgear and is used to control and protect lights
and other equipment in homes, offices etc.

High-rupturing capacity (H.R.C.) fuse in conjunction with a

switch
For the purpose of controlling and protecting the circuits of higher rating

Drawbacks of fuse: - needs replacement….considerable time is lost. During

this period, power supply to circuit is interrupted.

- When fuses are connected in series it is difficult to

discriminate the fuse unless the fuse has significant size
difference

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 Switchgear

Drawbacks of fuse:

- needs replacement….considerable time is lost. During this period, power supply

to circuit is interrupted.
- Fuse is slow compared to circuit breakers.
- When fuses are connected in series it is difficult to discriminate the fuse unless
the fuse has significant size difference
- There is a possibility of renewal by the fuse wire of the wrong size.
- Accurate calibration of fuse wire is impossible, as longer fuse operates earlier
than one of shorter length.
- Fuse does not respond to the high voltage it only cares about current flowing
and is not likely to melt and save the house in case of a direct lightning strike.

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 Switchgear

Circuit breaker
- Can close and break an electrical circuit under both normal and
abnormal conditions without replacement

- For high voltage and preferable for low voltage also

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Switchgear

Relays
For automatic operation of circuit breakers under fault conditions, relay
circuit is used with it.

A relay is a device which detects the fault and supplies information to the breaker
for circuit interruption.

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What is Protective Relaying?

Protective relaying is the Science or Art of detecting faults

on power systems and clearing those faults from the power
system as quickly as possible.

What is Protective Relay?

A protective relay is a device that detects the fault and

initiates the operation of the circuit breaker to isolate the
defective element from the rest of the system.

Detection – by constantly measuring the electrical quantities

(v, i, f and )
 Power System Faults

A power system fault is the

breakdown of insulation (between
conductors, or between a phase
conductor and ground) or a
conducting object comes into
contact with a live point which
results in excess current flow.
 Types of Faults

On a three-phase power system the principal types of fault are:

a) Single line-to-ground fault b) Line-to-line fault

Single line-to-ground fault Line-to-line fault

c) Double line-to-ground fault d) Symmetrical 3- fault

Double line-to-ground fault

Symmetrical 3- fault
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 Types of Faults

Transient Fault

Semi Permanent Fault

Permanent Fault

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 Types of Faults

Transient Fault

On overhead transmission lines the

insulation that breaks down is air.

When such a fault occurs there is a

flashover or arc (often along the surface
of an insulator string).

If the fault is cleared quickly, no

permanent damage results, and the
transmission line can immediately be put
back into service.

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 Types of Faults

If lightning strikes a skywire,

or tower, and causes
100,000 amps to flow to
ground through a tower with
a footing resistance of 1
ohm, then a voltage of
100,000 Volts to ground is
developed.

A flashover of an insulator
from the tower cross-arm to
a phase conductor may then
occur. It will most likely
occur on the phase with the
highest voltage difference to
the voltage transient
developed by the lightning
strike.
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 Types of Faults

Semi Permanent Fault

Semi permanent faults are also transient in nature but there take
few moments to remove. Semi-permanent faults may get occurred
due to the falling of things on the live conductors. Semi-
permanent faults get removed after the cause of faults is burnt
away.

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 Types of Faults

Permanent Fault

- Insulators break or get punctured

- One or two phases break and comes into contact with the ground

Permanent fault will remain after a quick power removing.

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 Types of Faults

Permanent Fault

When faults occur in Transformers, Generators, Motors and Cables,

permanent damage usually results.

Such faults are usually caused by

 Mechanical failure of solid insulation, or

 In the case of transformers, contamination of the insulating oil.

 For SF6 insulated equipment, faults are often the result of

contamination of the SF6 gas by solid particles.

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Auto-Reclose
In an overhead transmission system,

80% of the faults are transient, and

12% of faults are semi-permanent

With such faults, the line can be restored to service immediately after
the breakers have tripped. Hence, AUTO-RECLOSE schemes are
normally used on the circuit breakers associated with overhead
transmission lines or feeders. If the fault current is interrupted by the
circuit breakers, the `flashover' arc is immediately extinguished and the
ionized air dissipates.
In auto-reclosing scheme if the fault is not cleared at first attempt,
there will be double or triple shorts of reclosing until the fault is
cleared. It the fault still persists, this scheme permanently opens the
circuit breaker. A prescribed time delay may be imposed on the auto-
reclosing system to permit the semi-permanent fault to remove from
the circuit.
For 33kV lines  intentional delay of 0.5 seconds
For 230 kV lines  intentional delay of 10 seconds 20
Auto-Reclose

Faults in generators, motors, transformers and

cables etc. are normally permanent and
autoreclose is not used. Such faults require the
equipment to be taken out of service for an
assessment of the damage and repair.

When a fault occurs, a very large current normally flows. This fault
current, if allowed to persist, will cause damage to equipment. On
an interconnected H.V. transmission system, an uncleared fault
can cause instability and system collapse: i.e. A `blackout' over a
very large area.
Faults must therefore be cleared in the shortest time possible.

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Magnitude of Fault Current

For a power system fault, the magnitude of the fault

current is determined by the impedance of the power
system between the source of generation, and the
location of the fault.

On large interconnected H.V. power systems the buses of large switching stations can be
considered as infinite buses. When calculating the fault current on a line or feeder supplied
from an infinite bus, we assume that the voltage remains constant at the bus, and the only
factor to limit the fault current, for phase faults, is the impedance of the line between the
fault and the bus. For Phase-to-ground faults it is the impedance of the line from the bus to
the fault, plus the impedance of the ground return.

The fault current on a distribution system feeder, fed from a transformer station, is
determined by the H.V. supply line impedance, plus the transformer impedance, plus the
impedance of the feeder up to the fault.

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Typical Relay Circuit

• First part is the primary

winding of a current transformer
(C.T.) which is connected in series
with the line to be protected.

• Second part consists of

secondary winding of C.T. and the
relay operating coil.

• Third part is the tripping circuit

which may be either a.c. or d.c. It
consists of a source of supply, the
trip coil of the circuit breaker and
the relay stationary contacts.

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Typical Relay Circuit

When a short circuit occurs at

point F on the transmission line,
the current flowing in the line
increases to an enormous value.
This results in a heavy current flow
through the relay coil, causing the
relay to operate by closing its
contacts. This in turn closes the
trip circuit of the breaker, making
the circuit breaker open and
isolating the faulty section from
the rest of the system. In this way,
the relay ensures the safety of the
circuit equipment from damage
and normal working of the healthy
portion of the system.

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Fundamental Requirements of
Protective Relaying

 Selectivity
 Speed
 Sensitivity
 Reliability
 Simplicity
 Economy

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Selectivity

It is the ability of the protective system to select correctly that part of the system
in trouble and disconnect the faulty part without disturbing the rest of the
system.

A well designed and efficient relay system should be selective i.e. it should be
able to detect the point at which the fault occurs and cause the opening of the
circuit breakers closest to the fault with minimum or no damage to the system.
This can be illustrated by referring to the single line diagram of a portion of a
typical power system shown in Fig.

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Selectivity

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Speed

The relay system should disconnect the faulty section as

fast as possible for the following reasons :

Electrical apparatus may be damaged if they are made

to carry the fault currents for a long time.

A failure on the system leads to a great reduction in

the system voltage. If the faulty section is not
disconnected quickly, then the low voltage created by the
fault may shut down consumers’ motors and the
generators and the system may become unstable.

The high speed relay system decreases the possibility

of development of one type of fault into the other more
severe type.

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Speed
By high speed it is meant less than 0.1 seconds.

On 500 kV and 230 kV systems, faults are normally

cleared in 3 to 4 cycles, or 60 to 80 milli-seconds. Fault
detecting relays typically operate in about 1 cycle, or 20
milliseconds, and circuit breakers operate in 3 cycles, or
60 milli-seconds.

On distribution systems, which are usually radial in nature, slower fault

clearance times are permissible. TIME-GRADED overcurrent protection is
often used for fault clearance.

i.e. For high fault currents, there is fast clearance. For lower fault currents,
the fault clearance time is much slower.

The operating time of circuit breakers on distribution systems is typically 5

to 7 cycles, or 100 to 140 milliseconds.

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Sensitivity
It is the ability of the relay system to operate with low value
of actuating quantity.

Sensitivity of a relay is a function of the volt-amperes input

to the coil of the relay necessary to cause its operation. The
smaller the volt-ampere input required to cause relay
operation, the more sensitive is the relay. Thus, a 1 VA relay
is more sensitive than a 3 VA relay. It is desirable that relay
system should be sensitive so that it operates with low
values of volt-ampere input.

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Reliability

It is the ability of the relay system to operate under

the pre-determined conditions. Without reliability, the
protection would be rendered largely ineffective and
could even become a liability.

Simplicity
The relaying system should be simple so that it can be
easily maintained. Reliability is closely related to
simplicity. The simpler the protection scheme, the
greater will be its reliability.

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Economy

The most important factor in the choice of a particular

protection scheme is the economic aspect. Sometimes
it is economically unjustified to use an ideal scheme of
protection and a compromise method has to be
adopted. As a rule, the protective gear should not cost
more than 5% of total cost. However, when the
apparatus to be protected is of utmost importance (e.g.
generator, main transmission line etc.), economic
considerations are often subordinated to reliability.

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