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Numerical Differential Protection Algorithm for Power Transformers

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DOI: 10.1109/IEEEGCC.2013.6705819

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 2013 IEEE GCC Conference and exhibition, November 17-20, Doha, Qatar

Numerical Differential Protection Algorithm for Power

Transformers
Abdelrahman H. Hamouda, Fadel Q. Al-Anzi, Hussein K. Gad, Adel Gastli, Senior Member, IEEE,
Department of Electrical Engineering, College of Engineering, Qatar University, P.O. Box 2713, Doha, Qatar
ah091927@qu.edu.qa fa087194@qu.edu.qa hg097262@qu.edu.qa adel.gastli@qu.edu.qa

Abstract—The differential protective system establishes the main

protection against short circuits occurring on transformer
windings. This protective system should operate rapidly when
internal faults occur. However, it should not operate under non-
fault conditions such as a flowing inrush current. In digital
differential relays, differential currents or other required signals
are sampled and processed according to protective algorithms.
Most of the existing fault detection algorithms in the digital
differential protection of power transformers are based on
processing the harmonic content of the differential currents.
These methods utilize the fact that the ratio of the second Fig. 1: Schematic of transformer differential protection
harmonic to the fundamental component of differential currents
under inrush current conditions is greater in comparison to that One current transformer (CT) is used in the primary
under fault conditions. In this paper, transformer terminal
winding and a second one in the secondary winding. The
voltage and current signals are sensed and utilized to enhance
outputs of the CTs are connected in such a way that the
the reliability of differential protection. The proposed algorithm
is tested by simulation and compared to a conventional
current of each CT opposes the other, thus, leading to
harmonic detection-based algorithm. normally a zero sum of the two currents. If the sum is not zero,
this may mean that the ratio of one of the windings has been
Key words — Differential Protection, Differential Relay, Inrush changed because of a short between the windings and
Current, Microcontroller, Power Transformer, Winding Faults consequently a trip signal can be sent by the protection relay
to the circuit breaker in order to trip and disconnect the
I. INTRODUCTION transformer from the power line and load.

T
RASFORMER failures can have external or internal
causes. This research will concentrate mainly on the
protection against internal faults. The internal faults
can be classified into the followings:
a) Winding failures due to short circuits (turn-turn faults,
phase-phase faults, phase-ground, open winding).
b) Core faults (core insulation failure, shorted laminations).
c) Terminal failures (open leads, loose connections, short
circuits).
d) On-load tap changer failures (mechanical, electrical, short
circuit, overheating).
e) Abnormal operating conditions (overfluxing, overloading,
overvoltage).
One of the important protections against internal
transformer faults, such as winding turns’ short-circuit, is the
differential protection. The principle of the differential
protection, which is illustrated in Fig. 1, is simple.
The major operating challenge to the transformer
differential protection is maintaining security during CT
saturation for external faults (e.g. short circuit in the secondary
of the transformer) while maintaining sensitivity to detect low
magnitude internal faults. CT saturation reduces the secondary
output current from the CT, and causes a false differential
current to appear to the relay [1]-[3]. Besides, when
connecting a transformer to the power line, transformer
energization takes place and produces an inrush current which
develops a condition that resembles the condition of an
internal fault. If no prevention mechanism is considered and
provided, the differential relay will send a false trip signal to
the circuit-breaker [1].
To enhance the reliability of differential protection, several
published methods [1][4]-[10] have utilized current signals
with sophisticated artificial intelligent algorithms for the
detection of transformer internal faults and distinguishing
from inrush current effect. For instance, Fuzzy Logic,
Artificial Neural Networks, Wavelets have been used in [5]-

978-1-4799-0724-3/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE 440

 2013 IEEE GCC Conference and exhibition, November 17-20, Doha, Qatar

[ 10]. Most of these methods recognize fault conditions by the false tripping of the circuit breaker. Therefore, the RMS of the
distortion characteristic of the differential current waveform resulting differential current is calculated and subtracted from
which leads to the appearing of some special order current the RMS value of the differential current of the next cycle.
harmonics. Conventional transformer protection schemes use The sign of the resulting value is checked. In case of an
the second harmonic component as the discriminating factor internal fault, the difference between a cycle and the next one
between an inrush and internal fault current. Most commonly must be greater or equal to zero. While in the case of an inrush
used methods involve the detection of the 2nd harmonic current it is negative. This procedure follows the flow chart
content of the inrush currents which is used to block the illustrated by Fig. 2.
differential function. Typically, when the ratio of the second
harmonic current component with respect to the fundamental
current component exceeds a preset level (e.g. 15%), the
transformer differential protection in that phase is blocked [2].
There is still a room for more research and innovation in the
differential protection especially with the development of
more advanced and better performing microcontrollers and
sensors at lower costs.
This paper proposes a new design an efficient numerical
differential protection algorithm for power transformers. The
proposed method is reliable enough to distinguish between the
transformer internal faults and external faults and inrush
currents. The paper is organized as follows. Section II
introduces the algorithms of the new proposed method and a
conventional harmonic detection method which will be
compared to. Section III describes the modeling and
simulation of these algorithms using Matlab/Simulink. Section
IV presents and discusses the results and finally section V
concludes the paper.
II. ALGORITHMS DESCRIPTION
The proposed method depends upon two facts. The first one is
that the initial voltage during the starting of the transformer
excitation associated with the inrush current is zero. The
second one is based on the fact that the peak of the differential
current due to inrush current starts with a maximum peak at
the first cycle then it decreases every next cycle after
energizing the transformer until reaching almost zero while in
the case of internal fault, the differential current will remain
constant or increases depending on the development of the
internal fault.
The procedure of this method is as follows: the primary
and secondary voltages and currents are first measured using
the potential and current transformers. Then, the primary
voltage is delayed for a short time and then compared to a
threshold voltage to make sure that the first peak of the
differential current is omitted. If the actual voltage is below
the threshold value, then the transformer was not energized or
has been just energized. This satisfies the first fact. Another
process takes place during the previous analysis where it
satisfies the second fact. Both primary and secondary currents
Fig. 2: Flow chart of the proposed method
are measured. The primary current is referred to the secondary
side using the turn ratio. At the same time, the secondary
current goes through a time delay which compensates for the To compare the effectiveness of the proposed method to
phase shift between the primary and secondary. A small conventionally applied ones nowadays, the harmonic method
amplitude adjustment is also applied to compensate for the was also considered. This method is based on measuring both
magnetizing current and core loss. After that, the resulting primary and secondary currents and then referring the
current value is subtracted from the calculated one (the secondary current to the primary side. The difference between
primary current after referring it to the secondary). In normal the two currents is calculated which forms the differential
operation, the resultant, which is the differential current, is current. The differential current is compared to a pickup value.
zero. However, in the case of inrush current or or CT If the differential current is less than the minimum pick up, it
saturation this difference may not be zero and may lead to means that the transformer works normally and there is no

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 2013 IEEE GCC Conference and exhibition, November 17-20, Doha, Qatar

internal fault. Therefore, the protection method will repeat and III. MATLAB/SIMULINK MODELING AND SIMULATION
go through the measurements again for the next cycle. A. Proposed new method
However, if the differential current is higher than the
minimum pickup value that means that an abnormal condition Fig. 4 shows the Matlab/Simulink block diagram of the model
is detected and the differential protection scheme has to check as it is built and simulated.
whether this abnormal condition is an inrush, over-excitation,
or fault current [12]. Therefore, the percentage of the second
and the fifth harmonics are calculated to check whether they
are in the normal range or not. This is dictated by the fact that
the inrush current has high second harmonic which is above
20% [11] of the fundamental while over-excitation has high
third harmonic. If the transformer is delta-connected, then the
third harmonic will be trapped. Hence, it is more convenient to
measure the fifth harmonic which is above 20% [11] of the
fundamental. Although the magnitude of the fifth harmonic is
small compared to the third harmonic, it is still higher than the
fifth harmonic during the normal operating conditions. If the
differential current is an inrush or an over-excitation current,
no trip signal will be generated. On the other hand, if both
percentages were out of the specified range, then the Fig. 4: Modeling of a 225 KVA, 2400/600 V three-phase core-type
differential current is considered due to an internal fault. transformer
Therefore, a trip signal will be generated and sent to the circuit
breaker. The flow chart of the conventional harmonic method As it can be seen from Fig. 5, the simulation was done on
is shown in Fig. 3. 225 KVA, 2400/600 V three-phase core-type transformer.
Three phase source is connected to RL circuit to implement a

Start transmission line and then circuit breaker. After the circuit
breaker, measurement tool is placed to measure the voltage
and current on the primary side of the transformer. Another
measurement tool is placed after the transformer to measure
the secondary voltage and current. Then, a load is connected.
The differential protection which is the “Trip Signal” block is
shown in details in Fig. 5.

Fig. 5: The simulation block diagram of the tripping signal

generation

This tripping mechanism follows the proposed algorithm

that was discussed earlier in section 2.
Fig. 3: Flow chart of the conventional harmonic method It is important to highlight the choice of the threshold
values which is the base of the tripping mechanism. The
threshold value of ‘swithc2’ is the maximum allowed voltage
deviation. For example, if the allowed voltage deviation is

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 2013 IEEE GCC Conference and exhibition, November 17-20, Doha, Qatar
70%, the value has to be set to 0.7, while any value below that
will be considered as noise. The threshold value of ‘swithc1’
is zero based on the fact that during a fault, current is
increasing, hence; the difference between the two cycles will
be positive and the relay should trip. The number of allowed
short windings can be determined by ‘swithc3’. In other
words, the sensitivity of the relay is controlled by this switch.
‘Swithc4’ has to be set to one since it is the dot product that
combines the results of the current and the voltage branches of
the simulation block. Thus, the change can be done only on
threshold values 2 and 3 depending on the application, while
other threshold values have to remain unchanged.
B. Conventional harmonic restrained method
Fig. 6 shows the block diagram of harmonic restrained method
simulation.
Fig. 6: General block diagram of Simulink implementation of the
conventional harmonic restrained method.
It can be seen that the simulation was done on 132/33 KV,
54 MVA three-phase transformers connected to two circuit
breakers and two three-phase measurement tools on each side.
In addition, a three-phase source and series RL load is
connected to the circuit. As illustrated in the figure, the circuit
breakers take their commands from the differential protection
block diagram shown in Fig. 7.
Fig. 7: Simulink block diagram of the implementation of the relay
control algorithm.
443
Notice that the block diagram of the harmonic restrained
method differential protection starts by reading the primary
current of the transformer. Then, it reads the secondary current
and refers it to the primary side using the ratio of the
transformer in order to perform the calculations. Then, the
differential current is calculated by subtracting the referred
secondary current from the primary current. After that, the
absolute value of the differential current is taken and
compared with a threshold value. Before going through the
logic of the differential relay, the harmonic of the primary
current is calculated by the red block (harmonic calculator)
shown in Fig. 8 in details.
Fig. 8: Simulink block diagram of harmonics calculation
From Fig. , the fundamental, second and fifth harmonics
of each phase are measured in order to calculate the
percentage of the second and fifth harmonics (calculated based
on the fundamental component) for each phase and compare
them with the specified percentage of the second harmonic of
the inrush current and the fifth harmonic of the over-excitation
current. After determining the differential current and
percentages of the second and fifth harmonic, if there
differential current amplitude is above the threshold value
while the percentages of the fifth or second harmonic is above
the specified range then there will be no trip signal. But, if
there is a high differential current while the percentages are
within the normal range, then it will trip.
IV. RESULTS & DISCUSSIONS
C. New Proposed Method
1) Case of inrush current without internal fault
In this case, first the energization of the transformer is
simulated without any internal fault.
Fig. 9 shows phase differential currents rms values
obtained in the case of inrush current cause by the transformer
energization at 0.04ms. Notice how the rms differential
current increases during the first cycle and then decays
gradually.
 2013 IEEE GCC Conference and exhibition, November 17-20, Doha, Qatar

0.18
120

Mag (% of Fundamental)
0.16
100
0.14

0.12 80
0.1
i , [A]

60
if
d

0.08

0.06 40
0.04

20
0.02

0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 0
Time, [s] 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Harmonic order
Fig. 9: rms of the differential current waveform of phase a during
inrush current Fig. 12: The spectrum of phase a primary current

Notice that the second and fifth harmonic components can

Fig. 9 shows that there is no tripping signal generated be identified and evaluated compared to the fundamental
because the differential current continued decaying gradually component. In this case the second is 22% and the fifth is 5%.
to zero steady-state value. So even though the differential Conducting such test and measurement on a new or healthy
current value was above the threshold, the controller was able power transformer can provide the minimum and maximum
to recognize that is due to an inrush current. values of the percentages of second and fifth harmonics during
2) Case of an internal fault transformer energizing and over excitation. The measured
values can be used as thresholds during the practical
Now, an internal fault was introduced after energizing the
implementation of the control algorithm.
transformer and the controller was able to detect it and trip the
circuit breaker within 2 cycles. Note that the transformer was 2) Case of internal faults
energized at 0.02s and percentage of short-circuited winding Now, an internal fault occurring 3s after energizing the
turns in phase a were 5%. transformer is simulated and the corresponding differential
0.16
current for phase a is given in Fig. 13.
0.14
Idiff phase A [A]

0.12 1500

0.1 1000
i , [A]

0.08
500
dif

0.06
0
0.04
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5
Time [S]
0.02
Fig. 13: Phase a differential current before and after an internal fault
0
0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2
Time, [s]
0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4
occurring at 3s.
Fig. 10: rms of phase a differential current waveform during inrush
current and internal fault. Notice that the protection tripped immediately one cycle
after the fault took place. .
Notice that the circuit breaker has tripped at 0.06s which is 3) Case of an external fault
equivalent to 2 cycles. A three-phase short-circuit occurring after 8s and cleared at
D. Conventional Harmonic Resytrained Method 12s was simulated. The three-phase current waveforms are
shown in Fig. 14.
1) Case of inrush current without internal fault
Fig. 11 shows phase a differential current after transformer
energizing. Notice that the differential current starts with high 5000

value and then decreases until it reaches its steady-state value

Ia [A]

0
which is close to zero.
-5000
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
I d iff p h a s e A [A ]

1500 Time [S]

5000
1000
Ib [A]

500 0

0 -5000
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
Time [S] Time [S]
5000
Fig. 11: Phase a differential current during the normal condition
Ic [A]

0
After analyzing the primary current spectrum during the
few first cycles using the Fourier Transformation it is possible -5000
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
Time [S]
to obtain the harmonic components of the differential current.
Fig. 14: Three-phase primary currents before, during and after an
Fig. 12 shows the spectrum for phase a differential current.
external fault.

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 2013 IEEE GCC Conference and exhibition, November 17-20, Doha, Qatar
Notice that the currents returned back to their initial values
after the external fault is cleared which indicates that the
differential protection has not detected the external fault as an
internal fault.
E. Discussions
Both methods gave almost the same results where the inrush
current and CT saturation as well as over-excitation took place
and no tripping signals were sent to the circuit breaker. The
conventional harmonic method involves a lot of calculation
where the harmonics of the differential current are calculated
during each cycle. Thus, the microcontroller required for the
implementation of this method should be fast enough to
perform the required task. Usually a DSP is required for this
kind of calculations.
The advantage of this method is that it requires only one
cycle to determine whether the differential current is due to
internal faults or not.
The proposed new method, as described in the modeling
and simulation section, is based on very simple calculations
such as subtractions and if/then statements. Such calculations
require very simple and cheap microcontrollers. However, as
stated earlier, the proposed new method requires at least two
cycles to identify the nature of the differential current and to
decide if a trip signal is required or not, while the harmonic
restrained method requires only one cycle.
V. CONCLUSION
The paper introduced a numerical differential protection based
on a new algorithm which was modeled an simulated using
Matlab/Simulink. The results obtained from this new method
showed that the proposed algorithm works properly. A
conventional harmonic retrained method was also presented
and discussed in this paper and a comparison between the two
methods was conducted. Both methods showed that they can
detect internal faults and effectively differentiate between
these faults and external ones and also inrush current
occurring during transformer energization and over-excitation.
However, the conventional method takes only one cycle to
detect the fault while the proposed new method needs two
cycles to distinguish between internal faults and inrush current
situations.
On the other hand, the microcontroller needed for its
implementation can be a very simple 8-bit microcontroller
compared to a DSP that is required to implement the
conventional harmonic method. Thus, the proposed method
can be implemented practically with much lower cost
compared to the conventional harmonic method.
Finally, the use of the proposed new method as a
numerical differential relay is very reliable and can be easily
combined with solid state circuit breakers.
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