This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal.
Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL
A New Decentralized Approach to Wide-Area
Back-Up Protection of Transmission Lines
Manas Kumar Jena, Subhransu Ranjan Samantaray, Senior Member, IEEE,
and Bijaya Ketan Panigrahi, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—This paper presents a decentralized-approach-based
wide-area back-up protection scheme to identify the faulted line in
a power transmission network. The proposed scheme divides the
whole power system under study into different protection zones
(PZs) corresponding to generator bus(es). Furthermore, a “gain in
momentum” (GIM) index at each generator bus is used to minimize
the search set. This information helps in reducing the search space
to the PZ corresponding to the generator bus with highest GIM
following a fault. This area is termed as a vulnerable protection
zone (VPZ). Once the VPZ is identified, positive-sequence voltage
magnitudes of each bus within the VPZ are monitored to locate the
bus closest to the fault (BCF). Finally, reactive power-flow informa-
tion of each line connected to the BCF is used to identify the faulted
line. The performance of the proposed scheme is extensively vali-
dated on the Western System Coordinating Council-9 bus system,
the IEEE-39 bus New England system, and 246-bus North India
Grid using the Power System Simulation for Engineering. The test
results indicate that the proposed scheme is highly effective for the
WABP of transmission lines.
Index Terms—Fault detection, gain in momentum (GIM),
phasor measurement unit (PMU), vulnerable protection zone
(VPZ), wide-area back-up protection (WABP), wide-area
protection (WAP).
I. INTRODUCTION
ELIABLE operation of the back-up protection scheme is
R highly essential for maintaining stability of the power
transmission system. Traditional back-up protection scheme
uses zone-3 of the distance relay for achieving reliability. How-
ever, it is observed that maloperation of zone-3 distance relay is
the main culprit behind most of the cascaded outages in power
transmission system. The cause behind this is the use of local
end voltage and current by traditional zone-3 of distance re-
lays to identify the fault in the adjacent line [1]. Furthermore,
stressed conditions affect the relay margins of various distance
relays operating in the transmission system. The stressed con-
ditions are mostly induced due to one or more contingencies
such as generator outage and line outage in the power system
[1]–[3]. Thus, performance of the back-up protection scheme
under stressed system conditions is a matter of concern [4]–[6].
Manuscript received November 18, 2016; revised February 8, 2017; accepted
April 11, 2017. (Corresponding author: Manas Kumar Jena.)
M. K. Jena and B. K. Panigrahi are with the Department of Electrical Engi-
neering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi 110016, India (e-mail:
kumarmanas87@yahoo.com; bkpanigrahi@ee.iitd.ac.in).
S. R. Samantaray is with the School of Electrical Sciences, Indian Insti-
tute of Technology Bhubaneswar, Bhubaneswar 751013, India (e-mail: srs@
iitbbs.ac.in).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSYST.2017.2694453
1937-9234 © 2017 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
1
Faster advancement in information and communication tech-
nologies makes the concept of wide-area control and protection
become feasible. Zone-3 is generally used as a remote back-up
to Zone-1 and Zone-2 of an adjacent line in the case of fail-
ure of any protection unit (either a relay or breaker) preventing
fast clearing of the fault locally. Zone-3 usually operates with
a predecided time delay to coordinate with the other zones of
protection. This intentional time delay is around 90 cycles, as
suggested in [1]. Thus, the delays associated with the wide-area
back-up protection (WABP) schemes are not usually a trouble-
some issue.
Recently, synchronized phasor measurements are utilized to
solve many power-system-related problems such as transmis-
sion line protection, line outage detection, dynamic state estima-
tion, transient stability assessment, etc. [2]–[21]. The main idea
behind “revisiting zone-3 operation” is reported for the first time
in [1]. Thereafter, many synchronized phasor-measurement-
based WABP schemes are proposed in the literature. These
schemes can be categorized into two classes: dedicated and
supervisory schemes. In the case of dedicated WABP schemes,
the zone-3 relay is completely replaced by the new algorithm
[4]–[6], [11]–[19], whereas in the case of supervisory-based
schemes, the new algorithm supervises the operation of the
existing zone-3 relay [20]. Furthermore, most of the recently
proposed schemes work on a centralized approach, where the
end-to-end latencies along with data congestion at the phasor
data concentrator (PDC) are more. It is also observed that most
of the zone-3 maloperations occur either during (N – 1) contin-
gency (mostly generator outage or line outage) or during stressed
power system condition [10]. Thus, it is essential to take both
the scenarios into consideration while evaluating the efficacy of
the WABP algorithms. We believe that a reliable WABP scheme
should have the following features:
1) utilizes the existing smart-grid infrastructure;
2) should work reliably at least up to (N – 2) contingency
(generator outage and line outage);
3) should work securely under stressed conditions, such as
load encroachment and power swing;
4) end-to-end latencies should be minimum;
5) data congestion at the PDC should be less.
The main motivation of the proposed research work is to
achieve the above-mentioned objectives while utilizing the ex-
isting energy management system (EMS) based the smart grid
infrastructure. A decentralized approach will help in reducing
the latencies involved in transferring the data from all buses of
the system to a single protection center. Thus, in the proposed
scheme, the power system under study is divided into different
protection zones (PZs) corresponding to one or more generator
bus (es). The gain in momentum (GIM) of all generators during
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2 IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL

the first 0.1 s of a transmission line fault is monitored. In real

time, following a transmission line fault, the GIM information
of all the generators is used to locate the vulnerable protection
zone (VPZ), i.e., approximate fault locations. Then, positive-
sequence voltage magnitude (PSVM) of each bus within the
VPZ is monitored to locate the bus closest to the fault (BCF).
Finally, reactive power-flow information of each line connected
to the BCF is used to find the faulted line, i.e., faulted line
identification.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section II
discusses the proposed method. Section III and IV present the
validation results. Section V is the concluding section.

II. PROPOSED SCHEME

The dynamics of the generator following a fault can be gov-
erned by
d2 δ
M = Pm − P e = Pa
dt2
where M is the inertia constant, δ is the rotor angle, Pm and Pe
are the mechanical and electrical powers, respectively, and Pa
is the accelerating power. During dynamic behavior, the speed
of the generator can be calculated in terms of the change in rotor
angle as follows:
dδ
ω= . (2)
dt
The rotor angle cannot be directly measured by phasor mea-
surement unit (PMU). Furthermore, rotor angle calculation
needs numerical methods, which is very time consuming [8],
[9]. Therefore, rotor angle estimation is required. The genera-
tor rotor angle and speed information can be obtained from the
terminal bus PMU data by applying the method suggested in
[9].
The proposed scheme utilizes the GIM information at each
generator bus to identify the VPZ. GIM is defined as
GIMi = Mi × (Δω)i
where
GIMi gain in moment of each machine “i”;
Mi moment of inertia of each machine “i”;
(Δω)i gain in speed of each machine in first 0.1 s following
fault.
The reasons behind selection of GIM are discussed below.
1) Real power transfer from a generator decreases when the
fault MVA supplied by the generator increases [10]. Thus,
the GIM of the generators in first 0.1 s of a fault is pro-
portional to the fault MVA supplied by the generator [10].
Generally, zone-1 of a distance relay that acts as primary
protection for the transmission line clears the fault in five
cycles (0.1 s in a 50-Hz system) [1]. As back-up pro-
tection is enabled only when primary protection fails to
operate, a time window of 0.1 s is considered for the GIM
measurements.
2) The GIM of a generator during the first 0.1 s is almost zero
if the generator is located far away from the fault point.
3) Therefore, the GIM of a generator is much higher and
sensitive to the fault location when the fault is on nearby
lines. Thus, the GIM of a generator will be an effective
indicator for VPZ.
(1)
Fig. 1. Architecture of the proposed decentralized WABP scheme.
In the proposed scheme, the power system is divided into sev-
eral PZs, as shown in Fig. 1. There is a system protection center
(SPC), which is connected to local protection centers (LPCs)
through dedicated communication platforms. The SPC receives
GIM information from PMUs and detects the VPZ. Once the
VPZ is identified, a status signal is sent to the corresponding
LPC. The LPC continuously monitors the PSVMs and the re-
active power flow of the lines. All the three information are
connected through logic “AND” operator to locate the faulted
transmission line of the network. The proposed WABP architec-
ture is very much similar to the existing smart grid infrastructure
of the Indian power system. The Indian power system is mon-
itored by a multilevel integrated EMS installed at many con-
trol centers dispersed all over India. The EMS of the National
Control Center [National Load Dispatch Center (NLDC)] is in-
tegrated with EMSs of five regional control centers. EMSs of
(3) regional control centers in turn are integrated with EMSs lower
32 state control centers. The NLDC EMS acquires data by inte-
grating all regional EMSs through high-speed communication
links on the intercontrol center protocol [22]. Thus, the SLDCs
can act as LPCs of the proposed scheme, whereas RLDCs can
act as SPCs.
An offline analysis was made for each test system in order
to divide the whole system into several PZs. In recent years,
many pattern recognition algorithms have been used for power
system applications [23]. In the proposed study, a data mining
model known as decision tree (DT) [23], [24] is used to divide
the system into different PZs. Initially, the original system is
divided into different PZs looking at the location of generators in
the system. For example, in the IEEE-39 bus system, looking at
the electrical distance between generators, the system is initially
divided into eight PZs. The next task is to allocate the number
of buses to be monitored in each PZ. In order to accomplish this
task, different types of transmission line faults are simulated in
each PZs. PSVMs of all the buses along with the GIM of all
generators during the first 0.1 s of a fault on all the lines one at
a time are monitored. Both the GIM of all the generators and
PSVMs of all the buses of the system are used as input to a DT.
The output of the DT was set to 0 for the no-fault situation and
1 for the faulted situation. The DT algorithm has two important
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JENA et al.: NEW DECENTRALIZED APPROACH TO WIDE-AREA BACK-UP PROTECTION OF TRANSMISSION LINES 3

TABLE I
BUSES BELONGING TO EACH PZ OF DIFFERENT TEST SYSTEMS

attributes termed as “variable importance” and “correlation,”

which help in identifying the most valuable input variables.
“Variable importance” helps in weighing the input variables in
terms of their contribution in predicting the target output/class.
“Correlation” helps in eliminating redundant input features [21],
[22]. Thus, looking at the trained DT, the generators whose GIM
values are taking part in final decision making for detecting fault
in PZ1 are included in PZ1. Similarly, the buses whose PSVMs
are taking part in final decision making in detecting fault in
PZ1 are included in PZ1. Likewise, generators and buses are
allocated to each PZ of each test system, as summarized in
Table I.
From the implementation point of view, PMUs are assumed
to be installed at some vulnerable buses of the power system
whose zone-3 relays are to be replaced. This is an acceptable Fig. 2. Flowchart of the proposed scheme.
assumption considering the fact that all relays in the power sys-
tem are not vulnerable. The vulnerable relays can be identified of the line connected to the BCF is used to identify the faulted
using the technique suggested in [23]. line. Following fault inception in the transmission line, the re-
Fig. 2 shows the flowchart of the suggested algorithm. As active power is fed to the fault point. Thus, the pickup criteria
shown in the figure, the primary objective is fast identification can be defined as
of the VPZ using GIM information at the SPC. The VPZ is
identified using the following: ΔQij ≥ K3 (6)
GIM ≥ K1 (4) where ΔQij is the deviation in the reactive power flow of line
connecting the ith and jth buses of the VPZ. The threshold “K3 ”
where K1 is the threshold selected for the GIM. In this paper, the is set at 40 (in percentage). The threshold is set in such a way
value of “K1 ” is set at 0.003 p.u. The lower value of threshold that maloperation of the proposed scheme can be avoided during
is chosen to improve the sensitivity of the pick-up criterion for switching events in the power system. Thus, the line connected
high-impedance earth fault. The GIMs of all the generators are to the BCF with maximum deviation in reactive power flow can
monitored at the SPC and are sorted in the descending order. be treated as a faulted line.
The generator with the maximum GIM indicates the VPZ. Once
the VPZ is identified, the LPC of the corresponding PZ will be
given an alarm signal by the SPC. Upon receiving the alarm III. TEST CASES AND RESULT ANALYSIS
signal, the LPC will sort the PSVM information in descending The proposed WABP scheme is initially validated on two
order to identify the BCF. The BCF can be identified using (5), different test systems as follows.
as suggested in [5] as follows: 1) IEEE-39 bus system.
2) Indian 246-bus system (Reduced North India Grid).
Vi 1 ≤ K2 Vin (5)
Siemen’s commercial simulation software package named
1
where Vi is the PSVM of the ith bus of the VPZ, K2 is the Power System Simulation for Engineering (PSS/E) is used for
proportional coefficient, and Vin is the rated voltage magnitude development and validation of the proposed scheme. The al-
of bus “i.” The threshold of K2 is set at 0.6 p.u. [5]. The higher gorithm is also tested for different types of fault conditions
threshold for K2 is set in order to avoid maloperation of the including variations in fault parameters such as fault location,
proposed scheme during switching events in the power system. fault inception angle, fault resistance, etc. The performance of
After identifying the BCF, the reactive power flow information the proposed WABP scheme is also investigated for various
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4 IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL
Fig. 3. Single-line diagram of IEEE-39 bus system.
Fig. 4. GIM of the generators following a fault on line 26-29 of the IEEE-39
bus system.
stressed and contingency conditions such as load encroachment,
voltage stressed condition, power swing and generator outage,
and planned and unplanned line outage.
A. IEEE-39 Bus System
The IEEE-39 bus system considered for the study is shown
in Fig. 3.
The dynamic and sequence component data required for sim-
ulation in PSS/E environment were obtained from [24]. The
results are discussed below.
1) Fault on line 26-29: An a-g fault was simulated on line
26-29 at 1 s. As shown in Fig. 4, the GIM of generator-9
(Bus-38) increases sharply following fault inception. The
GIM for generator-9 fulfills criteria (4), which indicates
that the fault is inside PZ7 (see Table II). This will cause
an alarm signal to be sent to the LPC.
Once the VPZ is identified, the PSVMs of the PZ7 are sorted
in descending order. It can be seen from Fig. 5 that the PSVM
Fig. 5. PSVMs of all the buses under VPZ.
Fig. 6. Reactive power flow of lines 29-26 and 29-28.
of bus-29 is the lowest and fulfills criteria (5). In PZ7, bus-29
is connected to bus-26 and bus-28. Hence, the reactive power
flows of line 29-26 and line 29-28 are monitored. It is observed
from Fig. 6 that the reactive power flow of line 29-26 is changed
by 300% (from −70 to 140 MVAR), whereas the same for line
29-28 is 164% (from −37 to −98 MVAR) Thus, it is concluded
that line 29-26 is the faulted one.
2) Effect of planned generator and line outage on the de-
pendability of the DT: The DT, which is used to divide
the power system under study into different PZs is trained
with the following two conditions:
• fault with all the lines and generators intact;
• fault with (N−1) and (N−2) contingencies.
The contingencies include generator outage and line outage
under different loading conditions. Loads are varied within 90%
to 200% of the nominal value. As the division of the power sys-
tem into separate PZs will be accomplished in the offline pro-
cess, training of DT with above three situations is not a complex
task. To show the effectiveness of the trained DT during (N−2)
contingency, the fault scenario of line 26-29 of the IEEE-39 bus
system is repeated with generator-9 and line 26-28 going out of
service. Fig. 7 shows the response of all the generators following
fault inception. In the previous case following a-g fault on line
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JENA et al.: NEW DECENTRALIZED APPROACH TO WIDE-AREA BACK-UP PROTECTION OF TRANSMISSION LINES
Fig. 7. GIM of the generators following a fault on line 26-29 of the IEEE-39
bus system (with G-9 and line 26-28 outage).
Fig. 8. PSVMs of all the buses under VPZ (with G-9 and line 26-28 outage).
26-29, the GIM of generator-9 was maximum. However, in this
case, the GIM of generator-8 is maximum because generator-9
is out of service. The responses corresponding to PSVMs of
PZ7 is shown in Fig. 8, which declares bus- 29 as the bus closest
to fault. After finding the BCF, the reactive power flow of line
29-26 is observed. Fig. 9 shows that the reactive power flow of
line 29-26 fulfills criteria (6). It is concluded that line 29-26 is
the faulted one.
B. Reduced North Regional Power Grid (India)
Northern Regional Power Grid (NRPG) of Power Grid Cor-
poration of India Limited is the largest among all five regional
power grids in India [25]. The reduced NRPG system (220 and
400 kV only) network only consists of 246 buses, 376 branches
(lines/transformers), and 40 shunt reactors. The detailed line
data, bus data, and the dynamic data required for the dynamic
modeling of the NRPG system using PSS/E software are avail-
able at [25]. The simulation results for some of the test cases
are discussed below.
1) Fault on Line 3-71: A three-phase (a-b-c) fault was ini-
tiated on line 3(CHMRA4)-71(KISPUR4) at 1 s. In this test,
system generator-3(G3) and generator-4(G4) are kept in PZ2,
5
Fig. 9. Reactive power flow of lines 29-26 and 29-28 (with G-9 and line 26-28
outage).
Fig. 10. GIM of the generators following a fault on line 3-71 of NRPG.
TABLE II
PSVMS OF PZ2 OF THE NRPG SYSTEM FOLLOWING THREE-PHASE FAULT
which includes 11 buses in its zone (3, 4, 49, 51, 52, 54, 56,
62, 71, 72, and 73). Fig. 10 shows that the GIM of generator-3
fulfills criteria (4) following the fault inception, which indicates
that the fault is inside PZ2.
The PSVMs of the corresponding buses of PZ2 are depicted
in Table II. It was concluded that bus-3 is the BCF. Bus-3 is
connected to bus-71 and bus-73. Thus, the reactive power flow
through both the lines is monitored, and ΔQij values of both the
lines following the fault inception are mentioned in Table III. It
is observed that the reactive power flow of line 3-71 is changed
by an amount of 350%, whereas the same for line 3-73 is 150%.
Thus, it is concluded that line 3-71 is the faulted line.
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6 IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL
TABLE III
ΔQij (%) OF LINES 3-71 AND 3-73 OF THE NRPG
SYSTEM FOLLOWING THREE PHASES
Fig. 11. GIM of the generators (PZ2, PZ3) following generator outage.
2) Effect of Generator Outage: Discrimination between
three-phase faults and system stressed conditions is a challeng-
ing task as both of them are symmetrical phenomena. Thus, the
performance of the proposed scheme in stressed conditions is
validated.
In order to demonstrate the effect of generator outage on
the proposed algorithm, several cases are simulated. One of
such cases is reported here. In the 246-bys system, generator-3
(CHMRA4) is removed at 1 s. As mentioned in the above discus-
sion, generator-3(G3) and generator-4(G4) are kept in one PZ
(PZ-2). Furthermore, PZ-3, which is located nearer to PZ-2, in-
cludes G-9 and G-11. Following the generator outage (G-3), the
GIM responses of the generators of PZ-2 and PZ-3 are plotted in
Fig. 11. It is observed that the momentum of all the generators
in the PZ is decreasing. It is expected because generator outage
will not cause any GIM. Thus, the SPC will not give any alarm
signal to any of the LPC, and the proposed scheme provides a
secure response during the generator outage.
3) Load Encroachment: Similar observations are made dur-
ing load encroachment events in the NRPG. Three cases are
tested in order to observe the performance of the proposed
scheme in the presence of load encroachment:
1) increase in active and reactive powers of load on bus-
5(BHKRL6) from 19.84 MW and 7.93 MVAR to 40 MW
and 16 MVAR, respectively;
2) increase in active and reactive powers of load on bus-
17(BLBGR2) from 372.96 MW and 124.8 MVAR to 600
MW and 250 MVAR, respectively;
3) increase in active and reactive powers of load on bus-
245(KHNR2) from 160.56 MW and 64.224 MVAR to
350 MW and 150 MVAR, respectively.
The detailed result, as tabulated in Table IV, confirms that
none of the cases are to meet the GIM criteria. Thus, no alarm
signals were made to the LPC for sorting of PSVMs followed
by ΔQij . Thus, it is concluded that the proposed scheme will
remain secure during load encroachment event.
TABLE IV
PERFORMANCE DURING LOAD ENCROACHMENT IN NRPG
TABLE V
PERFORMANCE DURING POWER SWING IN NRPG
4) Power Swing: Finally, the effect of power swing on the
performance of the proposed scheme is simulated. Three cases
of power swing are reported here.
1) To create power swing, a line parallel to line
62(WAGORA4)-71(KISPUR4) is added to the network.
The newly added line is of same characteristics to that of
the existing line. Then, a symmetrical three-phase fault is
initiated at 1 s at the middle of the new line and the fault
is cleared at 1.1 s by opening the circuit breakers (CBs)
of both ends of the faulted line. Following the clearance
of fault, power swing condition is observed in line 62-71.
2) A similar case was created in line 185(RISHK2)-
219(KUDRI2).
3) Another case was created in line 32(ANPRA4)-
218(MAUUP).
The detailed results are tabulated in Table V. It is observed that
in cases 1 and 2, the scheme remains stable during power swing.
For case 3, the first two criterions were met during power swing.
However, criteria (4) was not fulfilled. Thus, it is concluded
that the proposed scheme is highly secure during power swing
phenomena.
IV. CONTROLLER HARDWARE IN LOOP (C-HIL) TESTING ON A
REAL TIME DIGITAL SIMULATOR (RTDS)
The proposed scheme is also validated on RTDS platform
[26]. We have hardware PMUs (TESLA 4000 from ERL [27])
available in the laboratory. A floating-point digital signal pro-
cessor TMS320 C6713 was selected in order to accomplish a
low-level interface-based HIL testing. In the laboratory setup,
the hardware under test is a controller and the interfacing signals
are at low level (within a range of +/−10 V, <50 mA). Thus, no
extra interface hardware/amplifier is needed for C-HIL testing.
The gigabit transceiver input/output cards of RTDS are used as
interface between the external controller, hardware PMU, and
the power system. Fig. 12 shows the snapshot of the experi-
mental setup developed in the laboratory. The C-HIL testing is
validated on the WSCC-9 bus system [5], [6].
The GIM, PSVM, and reactive power deviation information
was sent to the external controller, which is used as SPC/LPC.
The trip signal from the controller was sent back to the corre-
sponding CBs of the WSCC-9 bus system [5] through gigabit
transceiver digital input (GTDI) card. A set of typical results are
presented in Table VI. The obtained results show that the pro-
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JENA et al.: NEW DECENTRALIZED APPROACH TO WIDE-AREA BACK-UP PROTECTION OF TRANSMISSION LINES 7

also tested for various contingency conditions. The simulation

results along with C-HIL testing on the RTDS platform show
that the proposed scheme can provide a reliable back-up protec-
tion to the transmission system.

A. Response Time and Communication Issues

The response time of the proposed scheme is defined as the
time difference between the instant of fault inception and the
instant of fault identification. The algorithm is implemented
on a Core i5 processor with 16-GB RAM. The average re-
sponse time of the proposed scheme is found out to be 130 ms
(without including the communication latencies). This is also
confirmed while validating the proposed scheme on real-time
PB5 processor cards of RTDS technologies [26]. This time in-
cludes the time taken by the algorithm to identify VPZ, BCF,
and faulted line. However, wide-area measurement-based pro-
Fig. 12. RTDS test bed for C-HIL testing.
tection schemes have some communication delays associated
with them [28]. The PMU reporting rate is assumed to be
TABLE VI 60 frames/s [30]. The combined fixed delay caused by pro-
C-HIL TEST RESULTS cessing, multiplexing, and transducers is estimated to be 75 ms
[4], [28]–[30]. The delay caused by fiber-optic communication
medium can be assumed to be around 25 ms [4], [28]–[30].
Hence, the total delay can be approximated to be 100 ms. In the
decentralized approach, all the PMUs are not required to send
the data to a single SPC. This will help in reducing the data con-
gestion at the SPC. The end-to-end latency will also decrease
in the decentralized approach. As suggested, in the proposed
scheme, PMUs of a PZ will send data to its corresponding LPC.
Thus, depending on the location of LPC and SPC of a power
system, the total time taken by the relay to issue a tripping signal
to the corresponding CBs of the faulted line can vary from 230 to
TABLE VII 250 ms. As 60–90 cycles (1200–1800 ms for a 50-Hz system) is a
COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS common timer setting [1], [20] for back-up protection schemes,
hence the cumulative response time of 230–250 ms is not going
to affect the critical clearing time of the system.The proposed
scheme is validated on PSS/E and RTDS platform assuming that
a dedicated communication platform is established as devised
in [28] and [30].

B. Issues Related to Capacitive Voltage Transformer Transient

posed scheme can distinguish stressed conditions from faulted
situations with high efficacy.
The advantages of the proposed scheme can be summarized
as follows:
1) introduction of a new feature termed as “GIM” to locate
VPZ;
2) use of information obtained from the existing smart grid
infrastructure to develop WABP scheme;
3) it can work reliably under stressed power system condi-
tions;
4) A decentralized approach will help in reducing the laten-
cies involved in data propagation.
Table VII highlights a comparative analysis between the pro-
posed WABP scheme and some of the recently proposed algo-
rithms. It is inferred from Table VII that the proposed scheme
can accomplish the task of providing a reliable back-up pro-
tection to the transmission system. The proposed scheme is
Two types of voltage transformers are used in the power sys-
tem: potential transformer and capacitive voltage transformer
(CVT). Subsidence effect of the CVT mostly affects the fun-
damental frequency estimation of a PMU. In [8], an extensive
analysis is made among different available PMU algorithms and
their performance during fault conditions is tested. It was con-
cluded in [8] that the amplitude and frequency errors ascribed
to the extended Kalman filter PMU algorithm are only 0.2%
and 1 mHz, respectively, during fault transients. This result is
compliant with the requirement of the proposed WABP scheme.
C. Main-1 and Main-2 as an Alternative to Back-up Protection
The use of the same or different types of protection log-
ics for functionally equivalent protection systems is termed as
main 1 and main 2 [31]. The greater the independence of the
redundant protection logics, the less likely they will both fail
to clear a fault. Increasing the differences between main-1 and
main-2 protection systems will increase their independence and,
therefore, the overall dependability of the scheme. However, the
primary area of concern is the security aspect of the protection
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
8 IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL
logic. If both main-1 and main-2 work on the same principle
of operation (distance relay), then the probability of insecure
operation during stressed condition is not reduced. However,
if the logic behind Main-2 is such that it can operate securely
during stressed condition, then Main-1 and Main-2 logic can be
considered as a general alternative to back-up protection of the
transmission system.
V. CONCLUSION
A decentralized-approach-based WABP scheme is proposed.
It utilizes wide-area GIM data of all the generators to identify
the VPZ. Furthermore, PSVMs of all the buses belonging to the
VPZ are monitored to locate the BCF. Finally, the faulted trans-
mission line is identified using the change in reactive power
flow information of the line connected to the BCF. The pro-
posed protection logic is implemented using a decentralized
approach considering the existing EMS-based infrastructure of
most of the power systems across the world. The scheme is ex-
tensively tested for three standard test systems. Moreover, the
validation of the proposed scheme on the large 246-bus Indian
Northern Grid during stressed power system conditions shows
the efficacy of the proposed back-up protection scheme. Thus,
with the availability of today’s fast and reliable communication
platform, the proposed WABP scheme can be realized in smart
transmission grids.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Author M. K. Jena would like to gratefully acknowledge the
financial and technical support received from Dr. N. Senroy of
the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi.
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Manas Kumar Jena is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree at the De-
partment of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New
Delhi, India.
Subhransu Ranjan Samantaray (M’08–SM’10) is an Associate Professor with
the School of Electrical Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar,
Bhubaneswar, India.
Bijaya Ketan Panigrahi (SM’06) is a Professor with the Department of Elec-
trical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, India.