1.

1 Fundamentals of Power System Protection

The purpose of an Electric Power System is to generate and supply electrical energy to
consumers. The power system should be designed and managed to deliver this energy to the
utilization points with both reliability and economically.
The capital investment involved in power system for the generation, transmission and
distribution is so great that the proper precautions must be taken to ensure that the equipment
not only operates as nearly as possible to peak efficiency, but also must be protected from
accidents.
The normal path of the electric current is from the power source through copper (or aluminium)
conductors in generators, transformers and transmission lines to the load and it is confined to
this path by insulation. The insulation, however, may break down, either by the effect of
temperature and age or by a physical accident, so that the current then follows an abnormal path
generally known as Short Circuit or Fault.
Any abnormal operating state of a power system is known as FAULT. Faults in general consist of
short circuits as well as open circuits. Open circuit faults are less frequent than short circuit faults,
and often they are transformed in to short circuits by subsequent events.
1.2. Consequences of occurrence of Faults

Faults are of two type

 Short circuit fault‐ current

 Open circuit fault‐ voltage

In terms of seriousness of consequences of a fault , short circuits are of far greater concern than
open circuits, although some open circuits present some potential hazards to personnel.
Classification of short circuited Faults

• Three phase faults (with or without earth connection)

• Two phase faults (with or without earth connection)
• Single phase to earth faults

Classification of Open Circuit Faults

• Single Phase open Circuit

• Two phase open circuit
• Three phase open circuit

Consequences

• Damage to the equipment due to abnormally large and unbalanced currents and low
voltages produced by the short circuits
• Explosions may occur in the equipment’s which have insulating oil, particularly
during short circuits. This may result in fire and hazardous conditions to personnel
and equipments.
• Individual generators with reduced voltage in a power station or a group of
generators operating at low voltage may lead to loss of synchronism, subsequently
resulting in islanding.
• Risk of synchronous motors in large industrial premises falling out of step and
tripping out.

The general layout of a protection system may be viewed as given in the following figure
Trip circuit
1.3 Components of a protection system
Protection systems usually comprise five components:

 Current and voltage transformers to step down the high voltages and currents of the
electrical power system to convenient levels for the relays to deal with
 Protective relays to sense the fault and initiate a trip, or disconnection, order;
 Circuit breakers to open/close the system based on relay and autorecloser commands;
 Batteries to provide power in case of power disconnection in the system.
 Communication channels to allow analysis of current and voltage at remote terminals of a
line and to allow remote tripping of equipment.
For parts of a distribution system, fuses are capable of both sensing and disconnecting faults.
Failures may occur in each part, such as insulation failure, fallen or broken transmission lines,
incorrect operation of circuit breakers, short circuits and open circuits. Protection devices are
installed with the aims of protection of assets, and ensure continued supply of energy.

1.4 Zones and types of Protection system

1.4.1 Zones of Protection system

• An electric power system is divided into several zones of protection. Each zone of protection,
contains one or more components of a power system in addition to two circuit breakers.

• When a fault occurs within the boundary of a particular zone, then the protection system
responsible for the protection of the zone acts to isolate (by tripping the Circuit Breakers) every
equipment within that zone from the rest of the system.

• The circuit Breakers are inserted between the component of the zone and the rest of the
power system. Thus, the location of the circuit breaker helps to define the boundaries of the
zones of protection.

• Different neighboring zones of protection are made to overlap each other, which ensure that
no part of the power system remains without protection. However, occurrence of the fault with
in the overlapped region will initiate a tripping sequence of different circuit breakers so that the
minimum necessary to disconnect the faulty element
1.4.2 Types of Protection (Primary and Back‐up Protection)

1.4.2.1 Primary Protection

– The primary protection scheme ensures fast and selective clearing of any fault within the
boundaries of the circuit element, that the zone is required to protect. Primary Protection as a
rule is provided for each section of an electrical installation.

However, the primary protection may fail. The primary cause of failure of the Primary Protection
system are enumerated below.
 1. Current or voltage supply to the relay.

2. D.C. tripping voltage supply

3. Protective relays

4. Tripping circuit

5. Circuit Breaker

1.4.2.2 Back‐up Protection

Back‐up protection is the name given to a protection which backs the primary protection
whenever the later fails in operation. The back‐up protection by definition is slower than the
primary protection system. The design of the back‐up protection needs to be coordinated with
the design of the primary protection and essentially it is the second line of defence after the
primary protection system.

1.5 Protection System Requirements and some basic terminologies used

• The fundamental requirements for a protection system are as follows:

1.5.1 Reliability: It is the ability of the protection system to operate correctly. The reliability
feature has two basic elements, which are dependability and security. The dependability feature
demands the certainty of a correct operation of the designed system, on occurrence of any fault.
Similarly, the security feature can be defined as the ability of the designed system to avoid
incorrect operation during faults. A comprehensive statistical method based reliability study is
required before the protection system may be commissioned. The factors which affect this
feature of any protection system depends on some of the following few factors.

a) Quality of Component used

b) Maintenance schedule

c) The supply and availability of spare parts and stocks

d) The design principle

e) Electrical and mechanical stress to which the protected part of the system is subjected
to.

1.5.2 Speed: Minimum operating time to clear a fault in order to avoid damage to equipment.
The speed of the protection system consists primarily of two time intervals of interest.
 a) The Relay Time : This is the time between the instant of occurrence of the fault to the
instant at which the relay contacts open.

b) The Breaker Time: This is the time between the instant of closing of relay contacts to
the instant of final arc extinction inside the medium and removal of the fault.

1.5.3 Selectivity: This feature aims at maintaining the continuity of supply system by
disconnecting the minimum section of the network necessary to isolate the fault. The property
of selective tripping is also known as “discrimination”. This is the reason for which the entire
system is divided into several protective zones so that minimum protion of network is isolated
with accuracy. Two examples of utilization of this feature in a relaying scheme are as follows

a) Time graded systems

b) Unit systems

1.5.4. Sensitivity: The sensitivity of a relay refers to the smallest value of the actuating quantity
at which the relay operates detecting any abnormal condition. In case of an overcurrent relay,
mathematically this can be defined as the ratio between the short circuit fault current (Is) and
the relay operating current (Io). The value of Io , should not be too small or large so that the relay
is either too sensitive or slow in responding.

1.5.5 Stability: It is the quality of any protection system to remain stable within a set of defined
operating scenarios and procedures. For example the biased differential scheme of differential
protection is more stable towards switching transients compared to the more simple and basic
Merz Price scheme in differential protection.

1.5.6 Adequacy: It is economically unviable to have a 100% protection of the entire system in
concern. Therefore, the cost of the designed protection system varies with the criticality and
importance of the protected zone. The protection system for more critical portions

is generally costly, as all the features of a good protection system is maximized here. But a small
motor can be protected by a simple thermally operated relay, which is simple and cheap.
Therefore, the cost of the protection system should be adequate in its cost.

1.6 Coordination
Relay protection coordination means that downstream devices (breakers/fuses) should activate
before upstream devices. This minimizes the portion of the system affected by a fault or other
disturbance. At the substation level, feeder breakers should trip before the main breaker. Likewise,
the downstream breakers should trip before the substation feeder supplying the panel
1.7 Need of protection scheme in power system

Electrical power system operates at various voltage levels from 400 V to 400 kV or even more.
Electrical apparatus used may be enclosed (e.g., motors) or placed in open (e.g., transmission
lines). All such equipment undergo abnormalities in their life time due to various reasons. For
example, a worn out bearing may cause overloading of a motor. A tree falling or touching an
overhead line may cause a fault.

A lightning strike (classified as an act of God!) can cause insulation failure. Pollution may result in
degradation in performance of insulators which may lead to breakdown. Under frequency or over
frequency of a generator may result in mechanical damage to it's turbine requiring tripping of an
alternator. Even otherwise, low frequency operation will reduce the life of a turbine and hence
it should be avoided.

It is necessary to avoid these abnormal operating regions for safety of the equipment. Even
moreimportant is safety of the human personnel which may be endangered due to exposure to
live parts under fault or abnormal operating conditions. Small current of the order of 50 mA is
sufficient to be fatal! Whenever human security is sacrificed or there exists possibility of
equipment damage, it is necessary to isolate and de‐energize the equipment. Designing electrical
equipment from safety perspective is also a crucial design issue which will not be addressed here.
To conclude, every electrical equipment has to be monitored to protect it and provide human
safety under abnormal operating conditions. This job is assigned to electrical protection systems.
It encompasses apparatus protection and system protection.