Causes of Electrical Faults

• Weather conditions: It includes lighting strikes, heavy rains, heavy winds, salt
deposition on overhead lines and conductors, snow and ice accumulation on
transmission lines, etc. These environmental conditions interrupt the power
supply and also damage electrical installations.
• Equipment failures: Various electrical equipments like generators, motors,
transformers, reactors, switching devices, etc causes short circuit faults due
to malfunctioning, ageing, insulation failure of cables and winding. These
failures result in high current to flow through the devices or equipment which
further damages it.
• Human errors: Electrical faults are also caused due to human errors such as
selecting improper rating of equipment or devices, forgetting metallic or
electrical conducting parts after servicing or maintenance, switching the
circuit while it is under servicing, etc.
• Smoke of fires: Ionization of air, due to smoke particles, surrounding the
overhead lines results in spark between the lines or between conductors to
insulator. This flashover causes insulators to lose their insulting capacity due
to high voltages.
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 Effects of electrical faults
• Over current flow: When fault occurs it creates a very low impedance path
for the current flow. This results in a very high current being drawn from
the supply, causing tripping of relays, damaging insulation and
components of the equipments.
• Danger to operating personnel: Fault occurrence can also cause shocks to
individuals. Severity of the shock depends on the current and voltage at
fault location and even may lead to death.
• Loss of equipment: Heavy current due to short circuit faults result in the
components being burnt completely which leads to improper working of
equipment or device. Sometimes heavy fire causes complete burnout of
the equipments.
• Disturbs interconnected active circuits: Faults not only affect the location at
which they occur but also disturbs the active interconnected circuits to the
faulted line.
• Electrical fires: Short circuit causes flashovers and sparks due to the
ionization of air between two conducting paths which further leads to fire
as we often observe in news such as building and shopping complex fires.

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 Fault limiting devices
It is possible to minimize causes like human errors, but not environmental
changes. Fault clearing is a crucial task in power system network. If we
manage to disrupt or break the circuit when fault arises, it reduces the
considerable damage to the equipments and also property.
• Fuse: It is the primary protecting device. It is a thin wire enclosed in a casing
or glass which connects two metal parts. This wire melts when excessive
current flows in circuit. Type of fuse depends on the voltage at which it is to
operate. Manual replacement of wire is necessary once it blowout.
• Circuit breaker: It makes the circuit at normal as well as breaks at abnormal
conditions. It causes automatic tripping of the circuit when fault occurs. It
can be electromechanical circuit breaker like vacuum / oil circuit breakers
etc, or ultrafast electronic circuit breaker.
• Relay: It is condition based operating switch. It consists of magnetic coil and
normally open and closed contacts. Fault occurrence raises the current
which energizes relay coil, resulting in the contacts to operate so the circuit
is interrupted from flowing of current. Protective relays are of different types
like impedance relays, mho relays, etc.
• Lighting power protection devices: These include lighting arrestors and
grounding devices to protect the system against lighting and surge voltages.

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 Protection of Generators
• Stator Protection
– Percentage differential protection
– Protection against stator inter turn faults
– Stator over heating protection
• Rotor Protection
– Field ground fault protection
– Loss of excitation protection
– Protection against rotor over heating because of unbalanced
three phase stator current
– Protection against voltage regulator failure

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 Protection of Generators
• Stator Protection
• Rotor Protection
• Miscellaneous
– Over voltage protection
– Over speed protection
– Protection against motoring
– Bearing over heating protection
– Protection against auxiliary failure
– Protection against voltage regulator failure

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Stator Protection

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 Stator Protection – Percentage
Differential protection

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 Stator over heating protection
• Failure of cooling system, overloading, core faults, failure
of core bolt insulation.
• Method 1: comparing cooling medium temperature (inlet
and outlet temperature)
• Method 2: Temperature sensing elements on the stator
slots
• Temperature detector unit (thermistor, thermocouples,
resistance temperature indicator)
• Relay
• Wheatstone Bridge
• Small generators – bimetalic strip heated by secondary
current of CT placed in stator circuit. (this will not operate
in case of cooling system failure)
• Thermocouples are not embedded in rotor windings
(makes complicate in slip ring connection) and its
temperature can be measured by the winding resistance.
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 Stator over heating protection

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Rotor Protection
 Field ground fault protection

 Loss of excitation protection

 Protection against rotor over heating

because of unbalanced three phase stator
current

 Protection against voltage regulator failure

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 Earth fault protection
• Single rotor fault  stress increases in field
• Extra voltage induced in field winding
• second ground fault
• part of the field winding bypassed
• Current increased in the remaining portion
• Unbalance in the airgap fluxes
• Vibrations in rotor

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 Rotor earth fault protection:
• DC injection method or AC injection method.
• The dc or ac voltage is impressed between the field
circuit and ground through a sensitive overvoltage
relay and current limiting resistor or capacitor(in case
of ac).
• But dc source is generally used as over-current relay in
case of dc is more sensitive than ac.
• A single earth fault in rotor circuit will complete the
path and the fault is sensed by the relay.

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 Earth fault protection

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 Loss of excitation
• Excitation lost  speeds up Induction
generator  current induced over heating
• Round rotor no damper winding over
heating
• Salient pole rotor  damper winding carry
induced current

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 Loss of excitation protection:
When the excitation of generator is lost it operate as a
Induction generator. It derives excitation from the
system and supply power at leading power factor.
Which may cause-
 A fall in voltage & so loss of synchronism & system
instability.
 Over heating of rotor due to induction current on it.
A protection having MHO characteristic
is used to detect loss of field.
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 Loss of excitation

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 Protection against rotor overheating because of
unbalanced three phase stator currents

• Occurrence of fault in the stator winding

• Unbalanced external faults which is not cleared
quickly
• Open circuiting of phase
• Failure of one contact of the circuit breaker

Negative sequence component of unbalanced stator

current  double frequency rotor current 
overheating
I22 t = K
I2 = negative sequence component of current
K = 7 turbo generator
K= 60 salient pole hydro generator
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 Protection against rotor overheating because of
unbalanced three phase stator currents

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GENERATOR PROTECTION
Name Input Protecting to

Differential protection Differential Current Stator core and winding

Stator earth fault Voltage Stator core and winding
Over current Current Stator core and winding
Over voltage Voltage Stator core and winding
Interturn short circuit Current Stator core and winding
Rotor Earth Fault Current Rotor winding
Over and under Frequency Turbine protection
frequency
Reverse power flow Voltage and current Turbine protection
Loss of excitation Voltage and current Power System Protection

Back up protection for Voltage and current Generator protection

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 Protection of Transformer

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 Percentage differential protection

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 Transformer Overheating Protection
• Rating of the transformer depends on the temperature rise
above an assumed maximum ambient temperature.
• Overloading is not allowed if the ambient temperature is
equal to the assumed ambient temperature, at low
temperature some over loading is premises.
• Overloading depends on the ambient temperature,
maximum safe overloading is that which does not overheat
the winding.
• The maximum allowed temperature is 95o C.
• In thermal image technique, a temperature sensing device is
placed in the transformer oil near the top of the
transformer tank .
• A CT is employed on the LV side to supply current to a small
heater. Both the temperature sensing device and heater
placed in a small pocket.

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 • The heater produced a local temperature rise similar to
that of the main winding. The temperature of the sensing
element is similar to that of the winding under all
condition.
• Heat sensing element – silicon resistor or silistor it is
incorporate with the heating element and kept in the
modeled material. (whole unit form a thermal replica of
the transformer)
• Its in the form of cylinder placed in the transformer tank
about 25cm below the tank top.
• The silistor used as an arm of a resistance bridge supplied
from a stabilized DC source. An indicating instrument is
energized from the out of balance voltage of the bridge.
• Also the voltage across the silistor is applied to a static
control circuit which controls cooling pump and fan, give
warning of overhearing and ultimately trips the
transformer circuit breaker.

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 Protection against magnetic Inrush current

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• Magnetizing inrush current in transformer is the current which is
drown by a transformer at the time of energizing the transformer.
• This current is transient in nature and exists for few milliseconds.
The inrush current may be up to 10 times higher than normal rated
current of transformer.
• Although the magnitude of inrush current is so high but it generally
does not create any permanent fault in transformer as it exists for
very small time.
• But still inrush current in power transformer is a problem, because
it interferes with the operation of circuits as they have been
designed to function.
• Some effects of high inrush include nuisance fuse or breaker
interruptions, as well as arcing and failure of primary circuit
components, such as switches.
• High magnetizing inrush current in transformer also necessitate
over-sizing of fuses or breakers. Another side effect of high inrush is
the injection of noise and distortion back into the mains.

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 • The harmonic contents in the current are
different than those in usual fault current.
• The DC component varies from 40 – 60 %
• The Second Harmonics 30 – 70 %
• The third Harmonics 10 – 30 %
• The third harmonics and their multiples are not
appear on the CT leads as these circulate on the
Delta winding of the Transformer and the Delta
connected CT on the Y side of the Transformer.
• As the Second harmonic Current is more in the
Inrush current than the fault current, this
feature can be utilized to distinguish between
fault current and magnetizing current.

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 • The relay of this scheme is made to insensitive to magnetic inrush
current . The operating principle is to filter out the harmonics from
the differential current, rectify them and add them into
percentage resistance.
• The tuned circuit of XLXC allows only fundamental frequency to
flow through the operating coil.
• The DC and harmonics, mostly second harmonics in case of
magnetic inrush current are delivered into restraining coil.
• The relay is adjusted to not to operate when the second
harmonics (restraining) exceeds 15% of the fundamental
(operating) current, the minimum operating time is 2 cycles.
• The DC offset and harmonics are also present in the fault current.
Due to this the harmonic restrain relay will fail to operate, to over
come this an instantaneous over current relay is also incorporated
and said to operate above maximum inrush current

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• In an alternative scheme, harmonic blocking
scheme, a separate blocking relay whose
contacts are in series with those of a biased
differential relay is employed and it said to
operate when the second harmonics is less
than 15% of the fundamental.

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 Earth Fault Relays

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 Over fluxing Protection

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 Protection of Earthing Transformer

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 Protection of three winding
transformer

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 Generator – Transformer unit
Protection

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 Bus Zone Protection

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 Frame Leakage Protection
• Applicable to metal clad type switch gear station.
• More effective in case of isolated phase construction type.
• A check relay energized from a CT connected to the neutral
of the system, instantaneous over current relay is used.

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 Pilot Relaying Schemes
• It is used for the protection of transmission lines.
• Electrical quantities at the two end of the
transmission line are compared and hence they
required some sort of interconnecting channel
over which the information can be transmitted
from one end to other.
• Such an inter connecting channel is called pilot.
• Wire pilot (30km)
• Carrier current pilot (50kHz – 700kHz), (150km-
flat country)
• Micro wave pilot (450MHz – 10,000MHz),
(Exceeding in technical & economical capabilities
of Carrier current pilot).
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 Wire Pilot Protection
• Two wires used to carry information signals from one end of the
protected line to the other.
• It may be buried cable or a pair of overhead auxiliary wires other
than the power line conductor.
• Comparisons is made between CT’s secondary current at the two
end of the transmission line.
• As pilot channels are very expensive a single phase current is
derived from the three phase currents at the each end of the
transmission line.
• Wire pilot scheme are less expensive than carrier current scheme
(terminal equipment is simpler and cheaper).
• More reliable because of simplicity. From cost consideration the
break even distance 15-30km, it is recommended for short lines.
• Limited due to attenuation of the signal caused by the distributed
capacitance and series resistance.
• Circulating current principle and balanced voltage principle are used
for most practical schemes.

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 Circulating Current Scheme
• Suitable for pilot loop resistance upto 1000Ω
and inter core capacitance upto 2.5μF.

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 Balanced Voltage (Opposed voltage)
Scheme
• Suitable for 7/0.029 pilot loops upto 400Ω.
• Capacitor is used to tune the circuit to the
fundamental frequency.

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Solkar Scheme (Reyrolle)

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 Transley Scheme (AEI)
• Balanced voltage scheme with the addition of
directional feature.
• An induction type disc relay is used.
• Secondary – interconnected in opposition as a
balanced voltage scheme.
• Upper magent – summation winding to
receive the output of CT.
• Suitable for fairly long pilot having loop
resistance upto 1000Ω

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 Transley S Protection
• Latest wire pilot protection employed with solid state
technology.
• Very compact system, superior to other wire pilot
schemes.
• Phase comparator are employed for measurements.
• Used upto pilot loop resistance 1000Ω.
• When pilot Isolation transformer are employed which
is an optimal feature to introduce an insulating barrier
capable of withstanding 15kV, this scheme can
operate upto loop resistance 2500Ω with the help of
primary tap range available on the isolation
transformer.
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 Half Wave Comparison Scheme
• Similar to that of circulating current scheme
but operating principle is different.
• No operating coil & restraining coil.
• Rectifiers are connected so as to allow the
current through the operating coil only during
internal fault.
• RA & RB slightly greater than RP.
• CT’s are connected in such way that the
polarities of the voltage applied to the relay.

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• A → +ve, fig. (b) RB is short circuited by the rectifier
connecting across it, voltage applied to the coil B is
negative.
• Theoretically the voltage applied to OC – A is zero, but
practically it becomes slightly negative because of RA
slightly greater than RP.
• B→ +ve, fig. (c) RA is short circuited by the rectifier
connecting across it, voltage applied to the coil A is
negative.
• Theoretically the voltage applied to OC – B is zero, but
practically it becomes slightly negative because of RB
slightly greater than RP.
• No relay operates for external fault or during normal
condition.
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Incase of internal fault
• Voltage applied to both relays is positive during
the positive half cycle fig. (d). Both the relays will
operate in this condition
• During negative half cycle, the voltage applied at
the both ends of the pilot is negative fig. (e).
• An additional half wave rectifier is placed across
each relay coil to perpetuate current during the
dead half cycle.
• Non linear resistors are used to protect CT’s from
over voltage during the dead half cycle when the
two CT’s would other wise be open circuited.

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 Carrier current protection
• Used in EHV and UHV lines.
• Carrier channel at high frequency (50kHz-700kHz)
• Power level 10-20W.
Phase comparator carrier current protection
• Line trap is parallel resonant circuit tuned to the
carrier frequency connected in series with the line
conductor on both ends.
• Carrier transmitter and receiver at both ends and
connected to the power line through a coupling
capacitor.
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