Directional Inverse Time Overcurrent Relay for Meshed
Distribution Systems with Distributed Generation with Additional
Continuous Relay Settings
Hebatallah Mohamed Sharaf†, H. H. Zeineldin*,†, Doaa Khalil Ibrahim†
And Essam EL-Din Abou EL-Zahab†
†Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, Egypt.
*Institute Centre for Energy, Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
Keywords: Inverse time overcurrent relays, Protection
coordination, Distributed Generation.
Abstract
Coordination between inverse time overcurrent relays within
meshed systems are achieved by adjusting two relay settings;
pick up current and time multiplier settings. The operating
time of these relays is also a function of two additional
constants; one represents the constant for relay characteristics
and the other one represents the inverse time type. For typical
relays, each of these two constants has four definite values
and choosing between them indicates the selected relay
operating curve: either standard inverse, very inverse,
extremely inverse or long time standby earth fault time-
current relay characteristics. In this paper, a coordination
strategy, that takes advantage of the available capabilities in
microprocessor based relays, is proposed by considering the
two relay characteristic constants as continuous variable
settings that can be adjusted in addition to the conventional
pickup current and Time Dial Setting (TDS). The protection
coordination problem is formulated as a nonlinear
programming problem where the main objective is to
minimize the overall time of operation of relays taking into
account protection coordination constraints. The proposed
approach is applied to the IEEE 14 bus system and is
compared with the conventional two setting relay.
1 Introduction
ROTECTION relaying plays a vital role within the
P
operation of any power system. Overcurrent protection is
one of the basic protective relaying principles and inverse
time overcurrent relays is considered as the backbone of the
protection strategies in distribution networks where the
overcurrent relay settings are chosen to achieve coordination,
guaranteeing fast, selective and reliable relay operation to
isolate the power system faulted section [1]. Digital
microprocessor based overcurrent relays are currently widely
used for safe and efficient protection with much more
powerful capabilities than conventional electromechanical
overcurrent relays [2]. These developments in the relays’
technology are essential to cope with the growing interest to
develop the traditional electric power grids into “Smart
Grids” where an important feature of this smart grid will be
the increasing penetration of DG at distribution levels [3].
Generally, integration of DG has various impacts on
distribution systems and one major challenge is its effect on
the protection system including the increase of short circuit
levels, changing the distribution system nature into dynamic,
bidirectional power flow nature in addition to the relay
coordination failure [4].Directional Overcurrent Relays
(DOCRs) become an attractive option for modern distribution
systems. Such relays are coordinated optimally to minimize
the overall time of operation of all relays [5].
To overcome miscoordination resulting from DG integration,
new optimal relay settings need to be determined that take
into account its presence. Minimizing the relay operation time
becomes more critical in the presence of DG since DG can
lose stability. Different optimization methods, including
conventional and heuristic techniques, have been applied to
determine the optimum time dial and pickup current settings
of the relays that guarantee coordination and minimum total
relay operating times [6,7]. Other proposed protection
coordination techniques used different or modified groups of
relay settings and characteristics [8, 9].
This paper investigates the impact of using two additional
continuous settings for inverse time overcurrent where the
time-current characteristics can be easily defined by the user.
The coordination problem is formulated such that the relay
coordination will be based on four settings: the conventional
time dial setting (TDS) and pick up current (Ip) in addition to
settings A &B which control the time-current relation of the
relay and consequently the four are optimally chosen.
Choosing the operating time-current curve will depend on
adjusting the A & B at the optimal value. The proposed study
is implemented on directional inverse time overcurrent relays
(DOCRs) for the protection of the power distribution system
of the IEEE 14 bus system equipped with synchronous based
DG.
Section II of this paper explains the proposed coordination
strategy. Section III shows the optimization problem
formulation. Section IV presents the test system and the
simulation setup. Section V gives the detailed results and in
Section VI conclusions are finally drawn.
2 Coordination Strategy Using Four N M

Continuous Settings T ¦¦ (t
i 1 j 1
pij  ¦ t bij ) (2)

The typical inverse time current characteristic of a directional

overcurrent relay is formulated in the following Equation (1)
10
in accordance with IEC 60255:
9

Operating Time (seconds)

A
t TDS (1)
8
A=0.1745
I B=0.02 Standard Inverse
( )B 1 7
A=0.14 B=0.02
Ip 6 Very Inverse
A=13.5 B=1
where A is the constant for relay characteristic, B is the 5 A=0.14
constant representing inverse time type, TDS is the relay time B=0.04
dial setting and Ip is the pickup current setting. Typically, A 4

and B can have one of the four fixed standard values shown 3
in Table 1.
2

Relay Characteristic Type A B

1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Standard Inverse 0.14 0.02
Very Inverse 13.5 1 Current (Multiples of pickup current)
Extremely Inverse 80 2
Long Time Standby Earth Fault 120 1 Fig.1. Examples of inverse time overcurrent relay
characteristics with different A&B constants with TDS=1
Table 1: Different types of inverse characteristics curves.
Where t p is the operating time for the primary protection
Different TDS values allow working within a range of curves
for each relay characteristic type. Relay operating time depends relay and t b is the operating time for the backup protection
on the chosen TDS and Ip. The proposed approach takes relay. Two approaches will be investigated while optimizing
advantage of the flexibility available within digital inverse the A and B settings. Firstly, all the system relays are
time overcurrent relays by allowing operating within a wider considered to have the same time-current characteristics and
range of characteristics not limited to the four standard ones. in such case all the system relays will have the same
Considering the A and B as continuous variable settings of optimized A and B settings (same optimized user defined
different values, in addition to the conventional TDS and Ip, characteristics) that will be referred to in the following
allows working within different time-current characteristics. sections as optimized global A & B settings where relay j will
In Fig.1, with A= 0.14 and B=0.04, the relay will operate have an operating time ( t j ) equal to:
faster than the case where the very inverse type is utilized
considering the same value of TDS which is set to 1.The A
operating time is 2.5 seconds for a short circuit to pick current tj TDS j (3)
I
ratio of4. On the contrary, a relay set with A=0.1745 and ( sci ) B  1
B=0.02(with TDS=1) will result in a slower operating time of I pj
more than 6 seconds. With the additional two settings (A and
B), a wide variety of curves can be achieved which results in The second approach optimizes A and B for each relay such
higher flexibility while achieving relay coordination and thus that each one could have its optimal time-current
reducing the minimum total relay operating times and this characteristics and that will be referred to in the following
will be clarified more in the next section. sections as optimized individual A& B constants where the
time to be optimized will be:
3 Formulation of the protection coordination
problem Aj
tj TDS j (4)
The protection coordination problem can be optimized such I sci B j
that the objective is to minimize the coordination times of all ( ) 1
the relays while maintaining the conditions of protection
I pj
coordination. The objective function is taken to be the sum, T, Where in Equations (3) and (4), i is the fault location
of the coordination times of all the relays which needs to be identifier, with the total number of fault locations investigated
minimized as follows: being N, and j is the relay identifier, with the total number of
relays being M.
The following constraints must be satisfied for both studies
while solving the optimized coordination problem:
 t bij  t pij t CTI (5) one optimized (A and B) value for all system relays and then
considering different individual relay characteristics.
Simulations including different case studies: without DG
Where CTI is the coordination time interval which indicates
installation and with DG installations at different DG
the minimum time between the primary and the backup relay
locations and with different ratings are carried out. Table 2
for a fault next to the main relay. CTI can range usually
shows the relay settings (TDS and Ip) for the system shown in
between 0.2-0.5s and it is chosen to be 0.3s in this paper.
Fig. 4. All the settings lie between the minimum and
The relay settings (Ip, TDS, A, B) will have a maximum and
maximum limits and these settings result in the primary and
minimum values as given in the following constraints:
backup relay operating times shown in Table 3 with a total
relay operating time equal to 19.57s. All the primary/backup
I pj m in d I pj d I pj m ax (6) relays pairs maintained a coordination time interval equal to
TDS m in d TDS j d TDS m ax (7) or above 0.3s. The minimum primary relay operating time in
this analysis was chosen to be 0.1 seconds to avoid nuisance
Am in d A j d Am ax (8) tripping due to transient conditions and in consequence the
Bm in d B j d Bm ax (9) fastest backup relay operating time will be 0.4s (keeping the
CTI).
From Table 3, it can be seen that no primary or backup relay
The minimum and maximum pick up current (Ip) will depend operating time hits the minimum. Relay R13 has the fastest
on the system’s rated load currents and system’s short circuit operating time within the system’s primary protection relays
levels. TDS could take a value between 0.1 and 3. For the clearing the fault at node F11 in 0.2089s and its backup R3
A&B constants; they have been chosen within the analysis to has the fastest backup time which equals 0.5089s.
have the minimum value of 0.14 and 0.02 and a maximum
value of 13.5and 1 respectively which represent the
standardized values of the standard and the very inverse time- Relay TDS(s) Ip(p.u) Relay TDS(s) Ip(p.u)
current relay characteristics.
1 0.05 0.8747 9 0.05 0.677
2 0.05 0.3816 10 0.05 0.2862
4 System and Simulation Setup 3 0.05 0.4733 11 0.05 0.7151
The proposed coordination strategies considering optimized 4 0.1583 0.0343 12 0.05 0.557
global and individual A and B are applied to the distribution 5 0.05 0.7121 13 0.05 0.2354
portion of the IEEE 14-bus system shown in Fig. 2.The 6 0.123 0.0815 14 0.05 0.3661
detailed system parameters can be found in [10].The system is 7 0.05 1.0515 15 0.05 0.5120
fed through two 60 MVA 132kV/33 kV transformers 8 0.05 0.3347 16 0.05 0.4039
connected at buses 1 and 2. Two synchronous based DGs are
connected at buses 3 and 5. Each DG is rated at 5MVA and Table 2: Optimal relay settings (TDS and Ip) considering
operates at unity power factor. Nodes are added at midway A=0.14 and B=0.02.
points of all lines (F8-F15) representing fault locations at
which three phase short circuit analysis will be carried out
[11]. The proposed strategies has been tested using different 5 MVA 6

case studies including the IEEE 14 bus system without the R14 R15 7
R6

addition of DG and with the addition of DG and considering R13 F12 R16
5
different DG sizes and locations. The protection coordination R4 F11
R10
problem is formulated as a nonlinear programming problem 5 MVA
F9
and is solved using the fmincon function in the Matlab F14
4
Optimization Toolbox which relies on the gradient-based F10
3
R2 R12
method that is designed to work on problems where the R11 R8
objective and constraint functions are both continuous and R5 F8
R3 R1 F13 F15 R7 R9
have continuous first derivatives [12]. 1 2

5 Results and Analysis 60 MVA 60 MVA

In this section, the optimal relay settings and the optimal relay Fig.2. The Distribution Portion of the IEEE 14 bus system
operating time for the assigned faults for the test meshed
distribution system are presented. The simulations include
the case where protection coordination is solved considering
A=0.14 and B=0.02 and then investigating the effect of
adding the (A and B) constants as continuous adjustable
settings for an inverse overcurrent relay firstly considering
 Operating times of relays in seconds Relay TDS(s) Ip(p.u) Relay TDS(s) Ip(p.u)
Fault
(p = primary, b = backup) 1 0.2378 1.2101 9 0.3177 0.9497
Location
p b1 b2 2 0.5501 0.4555 10 0.2993 0.3786
R1 R6 R4 3 0.511 0.6229 11 0.2055 1.104
0.3277 0.6277 0.6277 4 2.9722 0.0343 12 0.1454 0.925
F8
R2 R11 - 5 0.4121 0.9075 13 0.9025 0.2114
0.282 0.582 - 6 2.0817 0.0815 14 0.6026 0.4026
R5 R2 R4 7 0.1948 1.5497 15 0.2985 0.7072
0.2139 0.5501 0.9734 8 0.4221 0.4293 16 0.8014 0.3964
F9
R6 R13 R16
0.3257 0.7829 0.6257 Table 4: Optimal relay settings using optimized global A & B
R3 R2 R6 constants for test system including DGs.
0.2139 0.6637 1.4786
F10
R4 R14 - The total relay operating time is reduced compared to using
0.3267 0.6267 - the standard inverse characteristics to be 12.58 s instead of
R13 R3 - 19.57s. The new relay operating times are shown in Table 5
0.2089 0.5089 - and it can be seen that 11 relays out of 16 (the total number of
F11 system relays) recorded the minimum primary protection
R14 R5 R16
0.2156 0.671 0.8331 operating time of 0.1s and 9 backup relays recorded also the
R15 R5 R13 minimum backup operating time of 0.4s. The highest primary
0.2868 0.5868 0.5686 relay operating time is the operating time of R16 protecting
F12 against a fault at node F12 which equals 0.2043s.
R16 R9 -
0.3216 0.6216 -
R12 R1 - By examining the relays protecting against a fault at node F9,
0.3517 0.6517 - the operating time of the primary protection relay R5and the
F13 backup relay R2 hits the minimum limits; 0.1 and 0.4sec
R11 R7 -
0.3202 0.6202 - respectively. The operating time of the backup relay R4 is
R9 R8 - reduced to be 0.73 sec. Despite that the operating time of the
0.2728 0.5728 - other primary protection relay R6 doesn’t hit the minimum
F14 but it has reduced remarkably (0.1473 sec with a reduction
R10 R15 -
0.2971 0.5971 - more than 50% when using A=0.14 and B=0.02). The
R7 R10 - operating time of the backup relays R13 and R16 are also
0.3445 0.6445 - reduced to 0.5271 and 0.4473 sec, respectively.
F15 The previous results showed that operating times of the
R8 R12 -
0.2452 0.5452 - inverse time overcurrent relays within the system can be
reduced when working on the same user defined time-current
Table 3: Optimal primary and backup relay operating times characteristics that are based on the optimized global A&B
considering A=0.14 and B=0.02 with DGs. constants. Further enhancement can be achieved by allowing
each relay to have its optimal A and B constants. In such case,
Due to the meshed nature of the system F9 will have to be each relay will have four settings to be optimized; TDS, Ip in
also cleared through the primary/backup pairs R6, R13 and addition A and B that will identify its operating curve. Table 6
R16which have TDS and Ip equal (0.123, 0.0815), (0.05, presents the optimal values for all fur variables and the results
0.2354) and (0.05, 0.4039) respectively as shown in Table 2 of the relays operating times for the different faults is shown
and operating times equals 0.3257, 0.7829 and 0.6257s in Table 7.The total relay operating times in the case of
respectively as shown in Table 3. As mentioned earlier in optimizing the A and B constants for each relay experienced a
Section 3, firstly the A and B are chosen to be optimally small reduction in comparison to the previous case to be
chosen with the same value for all the relays in the system 12.4251s.
“global A & B”. The optimal values of the “global A & B” for
the IEEE 14 bus system under system under test are found to
be 0.1859 and 0.5 respectively. Table 4 shows the new TDS Operating times of relays in seconds
Fault
and Ip settings based on the new time-current characteristics (p = primary, b = backup)
Location
of the directional inverse overcurrent relays of the system. p b1 b2
R1 R6 R4
0.1 0.4 0.4
F8
R2 R11 -
0.1483 0.4483 -
R5 R2 R4
F9
0.1 0.4 0.73
 R6 R13 R16 kept their operating times while in the second group R6 and
0.1473 0.5271 0.4473 R16 experienced a slight increase in their operating times to
R3 R2 R6 be 0.1518 & 0.4518 sec respectively while R13 had a
0.1 0.5386 1.1523 reduction to be 0.513 sec. The other relay that had an increase
F10 in its operating time is R16 acting as a backup protection
R4 R14 -
0.1328 0.4328 - relay for F11. The highest primary relay operating time
R13 R3 - R16experienced a reduction in operating time (0.1885 sec).
0.1194 0.4194 -
F11 Operating times of relays in seconds
R14 R5 R16 Fault
0.1 0.5169 0.6101 (p = primary, b = backup)
Location
R15 R5 R13 p b1 b2
0.1 0.4 0.4 R1 R6 R4
F12
R16 R9 - 0.1 0.4 0.4
F8
0.2043 0.5043 - R2 R11 -
R12 R1 - 0.1339 0.4330 -
0.1 0.4 - R5 R2 R4
F13
R11 R7 - 0.1 0.4 0.73
0.1 0.4 - F9 R6 R13 R16
R9 R8 - 0.1518 0.513 0.4518
0.1 0.4 - R3 R2 R6
F14
R10 R15 - 0.1 0.5335 1.1333
F10
0.1 0.4 - R4 R14 -
R7 R10 - 0.1283 0.4283 -
0.1 0.4 - R13 R3 -
F15
R8 R12 - 0.1 0.4 -
F11
0.1 0.4 - R14 R5 R16
0.1 0.4872 0.6135
Table 5: Optimal primary and backup relays operating times R15 R5 R13
using optimized global A&B for the test system including 0.1 0.4 0.4
F12
DGs. R16 R9 -
0.1885 0.4885 -
R12 R1 -
Relay TDS(s) Ip(p.u) A B 0.1 0.4 -
F13
1 0.1022 1.2387 0.14 0.1886 R11 R7 -
2 0.3642 0.4253 0.7558 1 0.1 0.4 -
3 0.05 0.6806 0.14 0.0543 R9 R8 -
4 0.133 0.0343 4.559 0.5316 0.1 0.4 -
F14
5 0.1398 0.7743 1.8995 1 R10 R15 -
6 0.0621 0.0815 5.6064 0.4627 0.1 0.4 -
7 0.0654 1.5775 0.1538 0.1598 R7 R10 -
8 0.1367 0.3759 1.6797 0.9235 0.1 0.4 -
F15
9 0.05 0.9819 0.14 0.0756 R8 R12 -
10 0.1405 0.3587 0.8827 0.8593 0.1 0.4 -
11 0.0675 1.1049 0.3841 0.3568
12 0.05 0.9351 0.14 0.145 Table 7: Optimal primary and backup relays operating times
13 1.277 0.1601 0.5198 1 using proposed coordination strategy and optimized
individual A&B for the test system including DGs.
14 0.05 0.4593 0.14 0.0493
15 0.1047 0.681 0.9775 0.7656
More simulations, including the system without DG addition
16 2.8211 0.3602 0.1531 1
and adding DGs at different locations and with different
Table 6: Optimal four relay settings using optimized ratings, have been carried. Table 8 shows the total relay
individual A & B constants for test system including DGs. operating times (T) for some tested cases. The results show
that optimizing A and B can further reduce the total time for
As can be seen in Table 7, most of the relays kept their different DG penetrations.
operating times unchanged or experienced a small reduction
in their operating times except for three relays that had a
slight increase, when compared to the values in Table 5. For
the fault at node F9, the first group of relays (R5, R2 and R4)
 Two power grids protection”, Proceedings of 65th Annual
DG Capacity Global Individual
Settings Conference for Protective Relay Engineers, (2012).
and Location A&B A&B
Relay [5] H.H. Zeineldin, “Optimal coordination of microprocessor
based directional overcurrent relays”, Proceedings of
No DGs 19.66 13.16 12.55
Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer
DGs rated 3 MVA Engineering, CCECE, (2008).
19.57 13.12 12.52
@bus 4 [6] Waleed K.A.Najy, H.H. Zeineldin and Wei Lee Woon,
DGs rated 6 MVA “Optimal protection coordination for microgrids with
19.49 13.08 12.49
@bus 4 grid connected and islanded capability”, IEEE
DGs rated 3 MVA Transactions on Industrial Electronics, vol.60,pp. 1668-
19.86 13.18 12.64 1677, (2013).
@ bus 7
DGs rated 6 MVA [7] Turaj Amraee, “Coordination of directional overcurrent
20.09 13.35 13.02 relays using seeker algorithm”, IEEE Transactions on
@ bus 7
DGs rated 3 MVA Power Delivery, vol.27, pp. 1415-1422, (2012).
19.79 13.16 12.62 [8] Chabanloo, R.M.; Abyaneh, H.A; Kamangar, S.S.H;
@ buses 4,7
DGs rated 6 MVA Razavi, F., “Optimal combined overcurrent distance relay
19.91 13.27 12.92 coordination incorporating intelligent overcurrent relay
@ buses 4,7
characteristic selection”, IEEE Transactions on Power
Table 8: Total relay operating time (T) in seconds for Delivery, vol.26, pp. 1381-1391, (2011).
different DG sizes and locations. [9] Timo Keil and Johann Jager, “Advanced coordination
method for overcurrent protection relays using
6 Conclusion nonstandard tripping characteristics”, IEEE Transactions
on Power Delivery, vol.23, pp.52-57, (2008).
The paper proposes optimizing the constants that control the [10] Univ. Washington, Power Systems Test Case Archive,
relay time-current characteristics (A & B) in addition to the Seattle, WA. Mar.2006 [Online]. Available:
conventional settings (TDS &Ip). The relay coordination is http://www.ee.washington.edu/research/
formulated as a nonlinear optimization problem where the [11] Alberto J. Urdaneta, Ramon Nadira, Luis G.Perez,
four variables are optimally chosen to achieve minimum total “Optimal coordination of directional overcurrent relays
relay operating time. The proposed study is tested using the in interconnected power systems”, IEEE Transactions on
distribution portion of the IEEE 14 bus system considering Power Delivery, vol.3, pp. 903-911, (1988).
midpoint faults without the addition of DGs and with their [12] www.Mathworks.com
addition at different locations and with different ratings. Two
approaches were tested: either optimally choosing a Global
A& B constants such that all the system relays will follow the
same characteristics or optimally choosing individual A & B
constants so each system relay will follow its own optimal
characteristics.
The simulation results show the effectiveness of using the
four variables in reducing the total relay operating time
through all the simulated case studies. Both approaches
(global and individual A&B constants) achieved a reduction
with a small improvement for the individual A&B approach
over the global A&B.

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