510 IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, Vol. 13, No.

2, April 1998

M.R. Zaman and h4.A Rahman, Fellow IEEE

Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science
Memorial University of Newfoundland
St. John's, Nfld., Canada A1B 3x5, Fax (709)737-4042

Abstvact- This work presents a novel technique t o distin- tial current is an internal fault or inrush including over
guish between magnetizing inrush and internal fault cur- excitation. Recent study reports that in certain cases, the
rents of a power transformer. The proposed differential al-
gorithm is based on artificial neural network ( A N N ) and internal fault current might contain cpnsiderable amount of
unlike the existing relaying techniques, this method is in- second'and fifth harmonics too [3]. Moreover, it has been
dependent of the harmonic contents of the differential cur- also reported that the low-loss amorphous core materials
rent. A novel neural network is designed and trained using
back-propagation algorithm with experimental data. After in modern transformer produces lower harmonic contents
training the network, simulation and on-line tests are car- in magnetizing inrush currents [4].Considering these fac-
ried out to evaluate the performance of the A N N based tors, many researchers continued their work to develop new
algorithm under different fault and energization conditions.
Both simulation and experimental results are quite satisfac- algorithms for transformer protection [3]-[5]. However, all
tory. these algorithms are either based on the transformer equiv-
alent circuit model and/or require some transformer data
and thus may become susceptible to parameter variations.
I. INTRODUCTION There are extensive researches and applications of arti-
In power systems, transformer is one of the essential ele- ficial neural network over the last five years, particularly
ments and thus transformer protection is of critical impor- in the field of pattern recognition. The main advantage
tance. In general, differential relays are used t o detect the of the A N N method over the conventional method is the
internal faults of a transformer which involves converting non-algorithmic parallel distributed architecture for infor-
the primary current and secondary currents in a common mation processing [SI. The A N N algorithm has been suc-
base and comparing them. The magnetizing inrush cur- cessfully implemented in many pattern or signature recog-
rent makes the transformer protection a challenge to the nition problems. Since this particular problem can also be
researchers. The magnetizing inrush occurs during the en- considered as a current waveform recognition problem, the
ergization of the transformer which sometimes results in a use of A N N seems to be a good choice. The A N N is be-
high current in the order of 10 times the full load current. coming a powerful tool in various fields of for power system
This high current might cause the relay to mal-operate. protection [7]. In recent years, few works which investigate
In order to avoid mal-operation of the relay, distinguish- the feasibility of using A N N for transformer protection has
ing between the magnetizing inrush current and the fault also been reported [S]-[lO].
current is required. In the present work, a novel A N N based method is de-
There are many existing algorithms based on the second signed and trained with experimental inrush and fault cur-
harmonic and sometimes also the fifth harmonic restraint rent data obtained from a laboratory prototype power trans-
concept [l, 21. Among these algorithms Walsh function, former. The A N N based algorithm is tested both off-line
rectangular transform, Harr function, Fourier, least square and on-line to evaluate the performance of the proposed
algorithm, etc. are worth mentioning [2]. In reference method in terms of accuracy and speed.
[2], the authors experimentally compared six such exist-
ing methods to find out the best one in terms of speed and 11. THEPROPOSED A N N DESIGN
reliability.
In all the algorithms described in reference [a], the sec- One of the difficult tasks in applying A N N technique to any
ond and fifth harmonics have been chosen so far as the particular problem 1s to formulate the problem. The first
indication for determining whether the measured differen- step to formulate the problem is to find out what would be
the inputs and outputs. In this particular problem, the in-
puts are the differential current samples. For a three phase
PE-045-PWRD-0-11-1996 A paper recommended and approved
by the IEEE Transformers Committee of the IEEE Power transformer, there will be three differential currents at each
Engineering Society for publication in the IEEE Transactions on instant. However, for training purpose, it is not required
Power Delivery. Manuscript submitted March 26, 1996; made to sample all of them, rather the current of one of the three
available for printing November 25, 1996. phases may be be adequate. At each instant a window of
16 consecutive current samples is taken as depicted in Fig.
1. Thus the input vector of the A N N is of length 16. The
choice of output in this particular problem is very straight
forward. A binary output is sufficient to indicate whether

088.5-8977/98/$10.00 0 1997 IEEE

 511

Similarly the net-input value and the output of the kth

output-layer unit can be calculated as:
L
output (3)
I(n -2) 3=1
Algorithm

Ln-4U
I ( n - 15
where the superscript o stpnds for the output layer, Wij’s
are the weights associated with the connections between
hidden layer and output layer and Bi’s are the biases as-
U sociated with the hidden-layer neurons and
Fig. 1: The ANN Inputs and Output
Opk = fO(sumik) (4)
the measured current is an inrush or an internal fault. In The output Opk is then compared with the desired or tar-
this work, a value of 0 indicates magnetizing inrush and 1 get output Tpk and depending on the error between the
indicates an internal fault. obtained output and desired output, the weight of each
After the inputs and output are defined, the next task connection and the bias of each processing unit are up-
is t o incorporate hidden layer(s) in the network. The se- dated. To update the weights and biases, delta rule is
lection of hidden layer is a matter of trial and error [6]. applied [6]. A cost function is first defined as:
However, it has been observed that in most applications,
one hidden layer is sufficient [SI. In this case also, one hid-
den layer is chosen. The number of units in the hidden (5)
layer is varied over a range of 12 to 2. Finally the ANN
with 3 hidden units are found to be the smallest structure The main objective of ANN training is to minimize the cost
with reasonably good result for this particular application function. Steepest descent method is used to do this where
of transformer protection. Associated with each neuron the change in weights are proportional to the negative slope
in the hidden layer and output layer is a transfer function. of the cost function i.e. ApWij ci -*. After some
k?
Usually nonlinear sigmoidal functions are used as the trans- deductions and manipulations, the changes in weights and
fer functions. In this work, log-sigmoidal functions are used biases are found to be :
for both the hidden layer’s and output layer’s neurons.
Once the ANN is designed it is required to train it. As ApWLj = 7 6 i k l p j (6)
mentioned, back propagation algorithm is used to train the
ApWk = 96:jXpi (7)
network. The algorithm is described in the following sec-
tion. ApBi = 76& (8)
A~B; = ~6;~ (9)
111. TRAINING ALGORITHM
where 6p“k and 6ij are called the error terms for output
The training of the ANN involves two phases of “propagate- layer and hidden layer, respectively and are calculated as
adapt” learning cycles [6]. The network learns a given shown below:
input-output example patterns. Each input pattern is ap-
plied to the network which propagates forward through (10)
each upper level until the output is reached. In each pro-
cessing unit the net sum is calculated first and then the sum k
is passed through the corresponding transfer function with
appropriate bias for that unit t o obtain the output of that and 7 is the learning rate which is chosen by trial and
unit. Thus for a given pattern Xp = (Xpl,X p 2 , ...,X p ~ ) t ,error. The learning rate, 7 is an important factor. Too
the net-input value of the j t h hidden-layer unit is: small a value of 97 slows the learning process i.e. a large
cumber of iterations is required; on the other hand, too
N
big a value of 17 although speeds up the learning process
h
sumpj =
i=l
+
W: Xp; Bj” (1) might cause instability. A simple method helps speeding
up the learning process to some extent and yet avoiding the
where the subscript p and superscript h stand for the pat- danger of instability is to introduce a momentum factor cy
tern and the hidden layer, respectively, Wk’s are the weights in the delta rule. The hidden layer weight change equation
associated with the connections between input layer and can be written according to the modified delta rule as :
hidden layer and Bjh’s are the biases associated with the
hidden-layer neurons. And the output of the j t h hidden +
AWk(n) = cyW:(n - 1) q6phjXpj (12)
layer is found just by applying the transfer function on the
net-input as given below: Although the above procedure is described for one hid-
den layer, however, this can be extended for multiple hid-
Ipj = fh(sum;j) (2) den layers. The above procedure has been done for all
512
available training patterns and then the whole process is
done repeatedly until a global error is reached t o a specified
minimum value. The total average error is defined as
p=l
where P is the total number of available training patterns.
IV. DATAACQUISITION
It is required to acquire different inrush and fault current
data for both training and testing purposes. A three phase,
5kVA, 23O/55O-575-6O0Vl multi-tap A-Y laboratory pro-
totype power transformer is used for all the experiments
of this work. The schematic diagram of the experimental
setup with the transformer connections is given in Fig. 2.
Three identical CTs are used in the primary side and an-
other three identical CTs are used in the secondary side
of the transformer. The differential current entering into
the point ‘x’of Fig. 2 is measured throughout the experi-
ment and the Tektronics probe with its amplifier, TM-503
is used to measure this current.
The magnetizing current may take various forms depend-
ing on the residual magnetism and the point on the voltage
waveform at the time of switching. It is also important
to mention here that the magnetizing inrush waveshape
at no-load is different than that at load. So both cases
are considered. To acquire the inrush current data, the
transformer is energized at random at both no-load and
load conditions. The current is sampled at a frequency of
20kHz and stored using a Tektronix 2212 digital storage
oscilloscope; which is next down loaded to the P C though
the General Purpose Interface Bus (GPIB). The software
package Grab 2212, is used to acquire the data in a format
which is later converted to ASCII for further processing.
For each switching, the data obtained is saved in a file.
Three identical triac switches and control circuits for those
are used to make the contact between the transformer and
the supply for a certain period of time. The details of the
triac switch and the electronic circuit are given in the Ap-
pendix. A three phase load is connected to the transformer
secondary through a 15A breaker which can be switched on
for load conditions.
There is a number of faults that can occur either before
or after the transformer is energized. The current wave-
shapes would be different for these two cases even if the
fault is same. Among many typical faults, the followings
are investigated in this work :
1. Primary side fault
a) Phase to phase fault after the energization
b) Phase to phase fault before the energization
Tests (a) and (b) are done both for no-load and load
conditions.
2. Secondary side fault
i) Phase to phase fault after the energization
ii) Phase to phase fault before the energization
iii) Phase to ground fault after the energization
iv) Phase t o ground fault before the energization
Tests (i)-(iv) are done for both no-load and load con-
ditions.
For each fault data collection, a resistor is used in series
with faulty circuit. The impedance does not change the
overall waveshape, rather just reduces the magnitude of
the fault current.
For all data in tests l(b), 2(ii) and 2(iv), inrushes oc-
curred after the fault. Many readings are taken to take
into account the different inrush conditions on the top of
the fault. Three identical triac switches are used as men-
tioned before in three lines and those are controlled by
three identical controlling circuits with one common push-
button switch. For taking the other data i.e. l(a), 2(i)
and 2(iii), one triac switch is used in series with the faulty
branch.
The data are stored in separate files for each fault type
and also for different inrush conditions for the same fault
 513
which occurred before inrush.

V. DATA PROCESSING
AND ANN TRAINING 2
?
a 1- trip
The data files need to be processed before it can be used
Y
for the ANN training. The data obtained after converting c
them to ASCII format is a series of current samples for h
L
about five cycles taken at 20 kHz. At first, these data are J
0
down sampled by a factor which gives the resulting data
a sampling frequency of 960 Hz. As mentioned earlier the 0 20 40 60 80
input pattern is consisted of 16 consecutive current sam-
time, m s
ples. A window of 16 samples per cycle is slided over the
data of about five-cycle time period. However, each value
is not taken as it is, rather at first the absolute value of
each sample is taken and then this value is compared to
the predefined threshold which gives a binary value of ei- 21
ther 0 or 1, depending on whether the value is smaller or
greater than the threshold, respectively. The threshold is
taken as ten times the value of rated differential current
under normal condition which is about 5% of the rated
current of the transformer. Thus each pattern becomes a
16 bit binary number. Among the possible 216 = 65536
different combinations of 0 and 1, it is expected that the
inrush and the fault would not be taking the same combi-
nations. However, there would be multiple Sam6 patterns time, ms
(combinations of 0 and 1)in each file and also between same
type (either inrush or fault) of data-files. The redundant
and duplicate data have been removed after windowing and
a unique set of inrush patterns and a unique set of fault 2r 1
patterns are found. Once the input and target vectors are
ready, the ANN is trained with improved back-propagation
algorithm with specified momentum constant and adaptive
learning rate [Ill.

VI. SIMULATION
RESULTS
‘
-1
0 20 40 60
I

80
Once the ANN is trained, it was tested using appropriate
set of weights and biases on a different set of input patterns. time, m s
As can be seen from Figures 3(a)-(d), for different inrush
and fault waveforms, the ANN based algorithm responds
accurately according to the input pattern. The decision
in all cases are made within one cycle. It is worth men-
tioning here that the fault data are originally taken with
an impedance. However, the impedance during the fault
may be unknown in real time. So the algorithm is verified
with different fault levels by scaling down the original data
upto 50% of the original value. The ANN can recognize
the faults in all cases. In this paper, few examples are pre-
sented which shows the fault and inrush current waveforms
-1 ’
0 20 40 60 80
I

and the decision of the ANN. time, ms

Figure 3(a) shows the secondary side phase to phase fault
with load and the fault has been occurred after switching
the transformer. As can be seen from Fig. 3(a), the ANN
recognizes the fault within one cycle of the fault occurred.
Other types of fault are also examined and two of them
are shown in Figures 3(b) and (c) as examples. In both
cases, within three quarter of a cycle, the ANN gives the
trip signal output. Figure 3(d) shows an example of inrush
Fig. 3: ANN responses t o different waveshapes - (a) sec-
ondazy side phase to phase fault after inrush with load, (b)
secondary side phase t o ground fault before inrush with
load, (c) primary side phase to phase fault before inrush
without load, (d) inrush with load, (yscale: 1 p.u. = 12.5
A).
514

Fig. 4: Functional block diagram of the relaying scheme

waveform. As expected] the A N N did not give a trip sig-

nal output even for the high magnitude of the inrush for
the first few cycles. The A N N based algorithm has been
tested for many other inrush waveform data and the alge
rithm worked perfectly and never gave a trip signal output.

VII. EXPERIMENTAL
RESULTS

The ANN based algorithm is tested on-line using the same

laboratory transformer. The relaying scheme is shown in
Fig. 4. The processing is performed using the DS-1102 0.sv n
digital signal processor (DSP). A program is written in C
language for this purpose. The software loads the values of
the weights and biases of the A N N required for the process-
ing of the tripping decision . When the DSP is started it
continuously takes the differential current sample through
the DSP’s analog channel and converts it to the digital
data using its built-in D/A converter. The digital data is
sent to the DSP’s memory through the host PC. The most
recent data are stored in a circular buffer of size 16 and
the 17th previous sample data is dropped off the buffer.
The 16 current data is processed using the weights and bi-
ases. The decision is sent to the control circuit through the
DSP’s built-in D/A converter. The control circuit drives
1v 2v
the three triac switches which are connected in series with

5V to OV which opens the triac switches and thus protects
the transformer against the fault.
Using this experimental setup the ANN based algorithm
is tested on-line. In Figures 5(a)-(d), some sample results
are presented. The results are very similar to what have
been shown in the simulation results. As can be seen from
Figures 5(a)-(c), in all fault cases, the trip signal has been
sent within a cycle and at that point, the control voltage
goes down from 5V to zero. On the other hand, for the
inrush case shown in Fig. 5(d), no trip signal has been
sent. It should be noted that like in the fault cases, the
inrush current is also allowed for three cycle time period
The tests are also performed for other two phases, taking
the data of one phase at a time and similar results are ob-
tained. The slight delay between the control signal and
the interruption of the differential current is due to the
switching time of the triac switches because, these types of
switches cannot turn off until the current through the cir-
cuit goes down to zero. However, in practical application,
these switches will be replaced by modern circuit breakers.
VIII. CONCLUSIONS
An ANN based transformer protection algorithm is tested
using experimental differential inrush and fault currents
data. In this work, a set of two types of primary faults and
four types of secondary faults with and without loads are
successfully tested using this ANN based algorithm. Both
off-line and on-line test results show that the algorithm is
capable of distinguishing between the internal fault and
magnetizing inrush currents quite satisfactorily and thus
successfully establish the efficacy of the proposed method.
The method neither depends on the transformer equivalent
circuit model nor the harmonic contents of the differential
currents, rather makes the decision based on current signa-
ture verification. Therefore, for modern transformers with
unpredictable harmonic components, this method would be
more effective. The method is simple but robust and easy
to implement.
APPENDIXTRIAC
SWITCH AND CONTROL CIRCUIT
In Figure 6(a), +3 and -4 are the input voltage terminals
fed from the controlling circuit. The output terminals 1
and 2 are open if there is no voltage at the input terminals
and shorted if 3 - 32 dc volts are applied to the input ter-
minals. The control circuit for the triac switches is shown
in Fig. 6(b). The pulse width 01 the control voltage is
calculated by the formula T = 1.1 RI C1. In our case,
all switchings are done for about 3 - 5 cycles. The design
parameters are R1 = 100 K , CI = 0.47 - 1.OpF R = 10 K ,
Cz = 0.01pF.
REFERENCES
[I] Rahman, M.A. and Jeyasurya, B., "A State-of-the-Art Review
of Transformer Protection Algorithms", IEEE Trans. on Power
Delivery, Vol. 3, No. 2, 1988, pp. 534544.
[2] %an, M.A., So, B. and Zaman, M.R.,"Experimental Test-
ing of a Stand-Alone Digital Relay for Power Transformers",
submitted for ZEEE PES Summer Meeting, 1996.
515
I I
I
(4
555
TriggerU
Input
o u t p u n
kT4
Cl
- 6: (a)
Fig. . , Equivalent circuit of the triac switch, (b)
Control circuit of the triac switch
Liu, P., Malik, O.P., Chen, D., Hope, G.S. and Guo, Y., "kn-
proved Operation of Differential Protection of Power Transform-
ers for Internal Faults", IEEE Trans. on Power Dekvery, Vol.
7, NO. 4, 1992, pp. 1912-1919.
Sidhu, T.S., Sachdev, M.S., Wood, H.C. and Nagpal, M., "De-
sign, Implementation and Testing of A Micro-processor-based
High-speed Relay for Detecting Transformer Winding Faults",
ZEEE Trans. on Power Delivery , Vol. 7, No. 1, 1992, pp. 108-
117.
Sidhu, T.S. and Sachdev, M.S., "On-line Identification of Mag-
netizing h h and Internal Faults in Three-phme Transform-
ers", IEEE Trans. on Power Delivery, Vol. 7 , No. 4, 1992, pp.
1885-1891.
Haykin, H., Neural Networks : A Comprehensive Foundation,
IEEE Press, Maanillan College Publishing Company Inc., 1994.
Sultan, A.F., Swift, G.W. and Fedirchuk, D.J., !Detection of
High knpedance Arcing Faults Using a Multi-layer Perceptron" ,
ZEEE Trans. on Power Delivery, Vol. 7, No. 4, 1992, pp. 1871-
1877.
Zhang, Y., Ding, X. and Liu, Y., "An Artificial Neural Network
Approach t o Transformer Fault Diagnosis", Power Engineering
Society Winter Meeting, paper 96WM 225-3-PWRD, Baltimore,
January 21-25, 1996.
Bastard, P., Meunier, M. and Regal, H.,"Neural Network Based
Algorithm for Transformer Differential Relay", Proceedings ZEE
Generation, Transmission and Distribution, Vol. 142, No. 5,
1995, pp. 386392.
Perez, L.G., Flechsig, A.J., Meador, J.L. and Obradovic, Z.,
"Training An Artificial Neural Network to Discriminate Be-
tween Magnetizing Inrush and Internal Faults", IEEE Trans.
on Power Delivery, Vol. 9, No. 1, 1994, pp. 434441.
Demuth, H. and Beale, M., Neural Network Toolbox : FOTUse
with Matlab, The Mathworks Inc., September, 1993.
Marzia Zaman has obtained her B.Sc. degree in Engi-
neering from Bangladesh Institute of Technology, Rajshahi
in 1988 and M.Eng. degree from Memorial University of
Newfoundland in 1993. As a Ph.D student, she is currently
working on transformer protection at Memorial University.
M.A. -man (F'88) is the University Research Profes-
sor at Memorial University of Newfoundland.
516
Discussion
J. Thorp (School of Electrical Engineering, Cornell Uni-
versity, Ithaca, NY): The authors are to be commended
for reviewing the power system protection literature on
the use of artificial neural networks for transformer pro-
tection. A recent tutorial [A] has an entire chapter on
Artificial Neural Network Based Protection including a
section on Power Transformer Protection. Would the
authors comment on some issues that have been exposed
in applying earlier work in the area.
Many power transformers are three winding with the
possibility of operating with the primary breaker open.
What is the single current used by the ANN for these
cases?
Previous ANN algorithms perform poorly in the pres-
ence of ct saturation. Have the authors tested their algo-
rithm in the presence of ct saturation?
Is reference [2] of the paper correct and complete?
Reference
[A] “Advancements in Microprocessor Based Protection
and Communication,” IEEE Tutorial Course Spon-
sored by the Power Engineering Education Commit-
tee and the Power System Relaying Committee, M.
Sachdev 97TP120-0.
Manuscript received March 4, 1997.
B.KASZTENNY (The Technical University of Wroclaw,
Poland). The following issues are found worth to be further
addressed by the authors:
1. The conclusions drawn from the inrush experiments car-
ried-out using a small-rating transformers cannot be ex-
tended for real power transformers. The time constant of
the inrush current in small units is in the range of milli-
seconds, while in the case of a real power transformer it
may be even in the range of seconds. This becomes par-
ticularly important when testing a relay under energizing
of a faulty transformer.
2. Inrush conditions occur not only when switchng a
transformer on. but also when clearing a near external
fault and during out-of-step synchronization. The inrush
issues should be also considered when energizing one of
two parallel transformers. What is the performance of the
presented inrushhternal-fault discriminator under the
above conditions?
3. What is the performance of the presented discriminator
under internal faults during that the current transformers
get saturated?
4. When forming the input signals for the ANN the authors
reject a large portion of information by applying thresh-
olding. What is the motivation for this? What are the
gains?
5. Since the ANN is fed with 16 binary inputs, it may be
easily presented by a 16-input logic circuit. Have the
authors any idea how this circuit looks We?
Manuscript received March 5, 1997,
Closure: (M.R. Zaman and M.A. Rahman) The
authors thank Drs. J. Thorp and B. Kasztenny for their
comments and interests on the paper. In response to the
comments of Dr. Thorp it should be mentioned that the
authors are now aware of the tutorial 97TP120-0 [A].
Obviously when the paper was written, reference [A] was
not available to the authors. However, artificial neural
network (ANN) technique has been successfully studied
in the area of Power Transformer Protection by Zhang,
Bastard, Perez, Sachdev, andothers [SI - [IO], [A]. Most
of these earlier works are primarily simulation types. The
difficult issues are experimental verification and on-line
implementation of ANN based relays. On-site testings in
utility settings are necessary in order to clearly establish
the efficacy of these relays.
This paper provides the laboratory test results
on a small 3-phase two-winding transformer. Thus no
testing was done on the three-winding transformer,
including cases when the primary breaker is open. The
authors agree with Dr. Thorp on matters relating CT
saturation. Unlike the model based and harmonic
differential transformer relays, the ANN based relays
work on the current signatures recognition. For the
limited laboratory testing cases, no significant effects on
CT saturation were observed. Complete reference [2] is
given as: M.A. Rahman,B. So, M.R. Zaman and M.A.
Hoque, “Testing ofAlgorithms for a Stand-Alone Digital
Relay for Power Transformers”, EEE Power
Engineering Society Winter Meetings New York,
February 1997, Paper No. PE-202-PWRD-0-1 1-1 996.
In response to Dr. B. Kasztenny’s comments the
authors concur with the time constants of typical power
transformers. The larger the power transformer, longer
is the time constant due to the larger values of kductance
in comparison to those of resistance. It is correct that
inrush currents occur at the other stated conditions.
Switching on inrush, inrush followed by faults with and
without loads are considered in the paper. Sympathetic
inrushes do occur as noted in the discussion. However,
their severity and frequency of occurances are somewhat
limited. Harmonic based discriminators andor
thresholds are not considered in the proposed ANN based
differential relay, as they work on the basis of currents
signature recognition. The tolerence for the error

function was set at a value of 0.0 1. Three full cycles of
input cun-ent signals are taken for this ANN based relay.
This is primarily due to shortning of the on-line
computation time of the weights and biases in the DSP
board. One of the gains of such truncation of data
procesSing is to attain high speed of operation of the relay
without losing system security. The relay operated within
8-12 ms as shown in Fig. 5 . High speed is a criterion of
fast operation of the present digital relay. In real time
implementation of a laboratory small three phase
transformer, three phase differential currents have been
517
measured and later scaled before processed by the ANN
algorithms as shown in Fig. 4.
More analytical and experimental works on the
ANN based digital relay are being carried out by another
graduate student. The results will be published in the
near future.
Manuscript received June 12, 1997.