Instrument Transformers

B3-Chapter 3

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 Introduction
 Power system transducers extract information from the
power system
 Current transformer (CT)
 Voltage / potential transformer (PT)
 CTs and PTs are the eyes and ears of the protective
system.
 Provide current and voltage signals to the relays (and meters)
which are faithful reproductions of the corresponding primary
quantities.
 Important roles
 Electrically isolate the protective relays from the high-voltage
power system for, the purpose of safety of the operating personnel.
 Step down the current and voltage to standard values such that 1 A,
5 A, 110 V so that the design of relays can be standardized
irrespective of the actual primary voltage and current.
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 CT Construction

 Two winding transformers with independent primary

and secondary windings.
 Single or fewer primary turns of heavy duty wire on primary.
 Large number of secondary turns wound on a laminated core
of low-loss magnetic material.
 One-turn primary winding, known as bar-primary, is
used when the magnitude of the primary current is
sufficiently high.
 Also known as series transformer.
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 Equivalent Circuit of CT

 Primary winding of a CT is connected in series with

the power network.
 Primary leakage impedance (R1 , L1) is insignificant.

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 Secondary referred equivalent circuit
 CT has to reproduce the primary
quantities at secondary.
 Secondary referred circuit is
better for analyse CT efficiency

 I1 Primary current referred to secondary

 Zm Mutual impedance seen from secondary
 Em Voltage across magnetizing reactance seen from
secondary
 Zb Burden impedance
 Eb Voltage across burden

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 CT Errors ..
 Ideally, CT should faithfully transform the current
without any errors.
𝐼1 = 𝐼2 + 𝐼𝑚
𝐸𝑚
𝐼𝑚 =
𝑍𝑚
𝐸𝑚 = 𝐸𝑏 + 𝐼2 𝑍2
 Ratio error in reproduced current
𝐸𝑟𝑟𝑜𝑟 𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝐼1 − 𝐼2 𝐼𝑚
𝜀= = =
𝑇𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑟𝑒𝑡𝑛𝑡 𝐼1 𝐼1
 Zb↓, I2↑, Im↓
 CTs work at their best when they are connected to very low
impedance burdens.
 CT error is zero percent in an ideal case of zero burden
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 CT Errors ..
 Phase angle error
 Angular difference between the secondary current phasor
and the primary current phasor referred to secondary.
 Simplification
 Rm part of Zm can be neglected
 Tanθ ≈ θ for small θ
𝐼𝑚
𝜃≈
𝐼1
 Zb↓, I2↑, Im↓
 Phase angle error will be smaller for smaller burden

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 Ratio Correction Factor
 The CT error is usually presented in terms of a ratio
correction factor (RCF)
 Defined as the constant by which the name plate turns ratio n
of a current transformer must be multiplied to obtain the
effective turns ratio.
1
𝑅𝐶𝐹 =
1− 𝜀 RCF
𝑛𝑒𝑓𝑓 = 𝑅𝐶𝐹 × 𝑛
 Although ε and R are complex numbers, sometime
only magnitudes are used for approximation.

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 Practice Problem

𝑍2 + 𝑍𝑏
𝐼𝑚 = 𝐼
𝑍2 + 𝑍𝑏 + 𝑍𝑚 1

𝐸𝑚 = 𝐼𝑚 𝑍𝑚

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 Saturation Characteristics
 Zm is not constant due to non-linearity of magnetizing
branch
 The actual excitation characteristic of the transformer
must be taken into account.
 CT saturation
 Core is no more able to handle further flux with increase in
primary current
 No flux change when the primary current changes.
 No further rise in secondary current with the rise in primary
current.
 All of the ratio current is used as magnetizing current and
none flows in to the load connected to the CT.

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 Saturation Characteristics
 Linear Region AB
 Excitation current is virtually
proportional to primary current.
 Ideally, transformer must operate
in linear region.
 Knee point K
 10% rise in the open-circuit
voltage results in an increase of
50% in the excitation current.
 Saturated zone
 Curve becomes virtually
horizontal
 High error in transformation ratio
 Secondary current is highly
distorted.
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 Multi Ratio CT
 CT may be provided with several taps to obtain multiple
options of turn ratio.
 Turns ratios for CTs have also been standardized
 Secondary current is standardized to 5A

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Multi Ratio CT ..

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 Standard class design
 The equivalent circuit method of calculating the
performance of a CT depends upon the availability of
the magnetizing characteristic.
 Approximate assessment of the CT performance may
be made through its standard class designation.
 Defined by ANSI and IEEE
 Example: 10C400 or 10T300
 Standard is defined for 20 times loading
 First integer is error.
 Second integer is voltage at which above error exists.
 T signifies some uncertainties in the transformer design

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 Practice Problem
Calculate the maximum burden for 600:5 turn ratio CT for
class 10C400 to measure maximum current of 5kA.
 10% error for Is=100A at 400 V secondary
 Im = 10% Is = 0.1 × 20 10 = 10A
Vm 400
 Xm = = = 40Ω
Im 10 41.66A
37.5A
 At actual current of Ip=5kA 4.17A
5
 Is = × 5000 = 41.66A 167V
4.45Ω
600
40Ω
 At 10% error
 Im = 4.17A
 Vm = 4.17 × 40 = 167V
 Maximum allowable voltage at 5000A is 167V. It corresponds
to maximum allowable burden
167
 𝑍𝑏 = = 4.45Ω
37.5
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 CT Polarity Markings
 The terminals identified by solid marks indicate the
starting ends of the two windings.
 Both windings will go around the core in the same
sense (i.e. counter-clockwise or clockwise) starting
from marked terminal.

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 Measurement CT
 Used for measurement purposes under normal
operation.
 High accuracy requirements – error should be 0.5% to
1%.
 Designed to protect the instruments from possible
damage under fault condition
 Must not faithfully transform the fault current.
 Designed to saturate at currents more than around
1.2pu.
 By suitable design, the operating point of the
measurement CT is kept near the knee of the
excitation characteristic.
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 Protective CT
 Faithful reproductions of high fault currents is
required
 Increased requirements of quality and quantity of core
material.
 No requirements on high accuracy and errors up to
10% are tolerable.
 It is rarely necessary to determine phase-angle error of
a CT used for relaying purposes.
 Most relaying applications can tolerate phase-angle
error which for metering purposes would be
unacceptable.
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19
 Voltage Transformers (VT)
 Also known as potential transformers (PT).
 Normal transformers with the primary winding
connected directly to the high-voltage apparatus.
 One or more secondary windings rated at the standard
voltage of 69.3 V for phase-to-neutral voltages or 120
V for phase-to-phase voltages.
 Transformation error is negligible for all practical
purposes in its entire operating range (0 to 1.1pu).
 Two main types
 Conventional two-winding, electromagnetic type
 Capacitive voltage divider type, known as capacitive voltage
transformer, preferred for extra high voltages (>345kV).
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 CCVT
 One of the most common voltage sources for high voltage
relaying is coupling capacitor voltage transformer
(CCVT).
 A capacitor stack is usually connected to high-voltage
transmission lines for the purpose of feeding the carrier
signal as a pilot channel for transmission line relaying.
 The same string of capacitors is used as a potential divider
 Tap provides a reduced voltage of about 1 to 4 kV,
depending upon the particular choice made by the
designer.
 The tap point is connected to a transformer through an
inductance.
 The turns ratio of the transformer is such that the
secondary voltage is the standard voltage (69.3 or 120 V)
required for relaying.
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 CCVT ..

Inductive and capacitive elements can cause significant

phase angle error at secondary
𝐶1
𝐸𝑡ℎ = 𝑉𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑒 ×
𝐶1 + 𝐶2
1
𝐸2 = 𝐸𝑡ℎ − 𝐼1 𝑗𝜔𝐿 +
𝑗𝜔 𝐶1 + 𝐶2
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 CCVT ..
 In order to supress phase angle error, inductance L should
be selected such that resonance occurs with (C1+C2) at
power frequency ω.
1 1
𝐿= 2
𝜔 𝐶1 + 𝐶2
 By careful design of the transformer, its leakage
inductance can be designed to provide such compensation.
 To avoid the impact of undesired frequencies due to
ferroresonance, extra filtration circuit (Zf) is also used at
transformer secondary.
 Ferroresonance is caused by the nonlinearity of the iron cores.
 Saturation also impact the leakage reactance of transformer.
 Terminal markings of VT are similar to CT
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 Practice Problem
 Secondary referred values: V1
 C1= 0.0018μF
 C2= 0.018μF V2
 V2=6.6kV
 Tuning reactance L=?
 If VX1:VH1 = 0.5, V1=?
1 Calculate C1 to get
𝐿= 2 = 512𝐻 V2=3.8kV, if
𝜔 𝐶1 + 𝐶2  V1=380kV
𝑉1 𝐶1 + 𝐶2  C2=0.018μF
= = 11
𝑉2 𝐶1 𝐶1 + 𝐶2 = 100𝐶1
Primary referred value:
99𝐶1 = 0.018𝜇𝐹
𝑉1𝑝 = 2𝑉1 =…
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 Electronic Instrument Transformers
 Now, several techniques are available to transform the
measured quantity using optical and state methods.
 Such transformers are also suitable for DC measurements.
 Optical Sensing – Certain optical sensing media (glass,
crystals, plastics) show a sensitivity to electric and
magnetic fields and
 Such magneto-optic sensing material can be immersed in a varying
magnetic field.
 Intensity of light passing through sensing material will very with
the varying magnetic field.
 Varying light intensity can be transformed into electronic signal
using light sensors.

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 Electronic Instrument Transformers ..
 In the case of a current measuring device the sensitive
element is either
 free in the magnetic field
 immersed in a field-shaping magnetic core
 In the case of a voltage-sensing device the same
alternatives exist, but such elements are used that are
sensitive to electric fields.

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 Electronic Instrument Transformers ..
 Hall effect sensing is more
powerful technique
 Hall Sensor: Charge carriers are
deflected by perpendicular magnetic
field, producing a potential
difference between two ends of strip
 In its simplest shape, the Hall
effect voltage is directly
proportional to the magnetising
current to be measured.
 Need external power source for
sensing material
 For more sensitive applications,
sensing current can be fed
through the secondary of
ordinary transformers.

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