EIT Fundamentals Power Systems Webinar Slides

IDC Technologies and The Engineering Institute of Technology (EIT)
Fundamentals of Power
System Protection
by
Steve Mackay
www.eit.edu.au
EIT Micro-Course Series

• Every two weeks we present a 35 to 45 minute
interactive course
• Practical, useful with Q & A throughout
• PID loop Tuning / Arc Flash Protection, Functional

Safety, Troubleshooting conveyors presented so far
• Upcoming:
– Electrical Troubleshooting and much much more…..
• Go to http://www.eit.edu.au/free-courses
• You get the recording and slides
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Fundamentals of Power System Protection - Free Webinar 1

The nuts and bolts of

electrical power
system protection
www.eit.edu.au
Key Topics
• Need for protection
• Characteristics and components of a
protection system
• Faults and protection
• Earthing and its relevance to protection
• Protective devices
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Protection fundamentals
• What is protection?
– Avoiding the undesirable effects of abnormal electrical system
behaviour by appropriate action
• What are protected?

– Equipment, personnel and system (stability)
• Why are they protected?

– Damage, injury (Shocks/Arc flash), collapse
• How are they protected?

– Isolating the abnormal part of a system from the
healthy parts with least delay
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Power System Protection

Introduction
• Customers always demand power on a continuous basis
without interruptions.
• Hence it is necessary to foresee the likely interruptions that
may occur in the distribution system to detect failures and
to isolate only the faulty sections.
• Protective equipment or protective relay is used in a power
network to detect, discriminate and isolate the faulty
equipment in the network to ensure that the rest of the
system is fed with continuous power and at the same time,
damage to faulty section is minimized.
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Role of Power system protection
1. To safeguard the entire system to ensure

continuity of supply.
2. To minimize damage and repair costs.
3. To ensure safety of personnel.
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Power System Protection:

Basic Attributes
1. Selectivity:
Selectivity: To detect and isolate the faulty item only.
2. Stability:
Stability: To leave all healthy circuits intact to ensure
continuity or supply.
3. Sensitivity:
Sensitivity: To detect even the smallest values of fault
current or system abnormalities and operate correctly at its
setting before the fault causes irreparable damage.
4. Speed:
Speed: To operate speedily when it is called upon to do
so, thereby minimizing damage to the surroundings and
ensuring safety to personnel.
www.eit.edu.au

Protection philosophy
• Emphasis on Speed for the following
reasons:
– To minimise damage and repair costs.
– To reduce production downtime.
– To prevent undue thermal and magnetic
overstressing of healthy equipment on through fault.
– To keep voltage depressions as short as possible in
the interests of plant stability.
– Above all, to enhance the safety of personnel due to
arc flashes and electric shock.
www.eit.edu.au
Protection system components

• Measurement of electrical parameters
• Sensing abnormal behaviour
• Actuating the device for isolation
• Isolating
• Annunciating
• Powering
• Enabling (ex: earthing system)
www.eit.edu.au

Possible faults
• Cable Faults - Most common due to both external like
moisture, digging, etc., as well as fault currents being
carried
• Transformer faults - Not always common but economics

rule the decision on the capacity of standby transformers
• Busbar Faults - Catastrophic but duplication is more

followed in EHV substations.
www.eit.edu.au
Types of faults
• There are a number of different types of faults
• A protection system must work for all the types of faults it

is meant to operate
• Protection must operate at the least possible value of the

designated parameter
– Note: Current is NOT the only protection parameter
www.eit.edu.au

Active vs. Passive

Active fault types (solid and incipient)
Solid
Immediate, complete breakdown of insulation causing:
- High fault currents / energy
- Danger to personnel
- High stressing of all network equipment due to
heating and electromechanical forces and possibility
of combustion
- Dips on the network voltage affecting other parties
- Faults spreading to other phases
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Active vs. Passive
Active fault types (solid and incipient)

Incipient
A fault that takes a long time to develop into a breakdown of
insulation caused by:
Partial discharge currents
These faults normally become solid faults in time
www.eit.edu.au

Active vs. Passive
Passive fault types

These are not “real” faults but conditions that will
cause faults due to cumulative effects, such as:
Overloading (over heating insulation)
Overvoltage (over stressing insulation)
Under frequency
Power swings (damages generators)
www.eit.edu.au
Types of Three-Phase Faults
(A) Phase-to-ground (E) Three Phase-To-ground

(B) Phase-to-Phase (F) Phase-to-Pilot *
(C) Phase-to-Phase-to-ground (G) Pilot-to-ground *
(D) Three Phase * In mines
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Magnitudes of fault currents

• Normally impedance decides the value of fault currents -
But impedance can not be reduced below a certain value
• ground currents can be limited by grounding the neutral

of the source and choosing suitable grounding method
• Phase fault currents can not be controlled
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Transient and permanent faults

• Transient faults - do not damage insulation permanently
(eg. Tree branches on O/H line), re-closing will be
successful
• Permanent - the insulation has broken down permanently

requiring repair to restore insulation levels (re-closing will
fail)
www.eit.edu.au

Types of faults
• Phase Faults (limited only by positive

sequence impedance of system)
– High Fault Currents.
– Only limited by inherent impedance of Power System.
• Earth Faults
– Solid grounding means high earth fault currents
– Only limited by inherent zero sequence impedance of Power
system.
www.eit.edu.au
Consequences
• Heavy currents damage equipment extensively.
– Danger of fire hazard.
• This leads to long outage times.

– Lost production and lost revenue.
• Heavy currents in earth bonding gives rise to high

touch potentials - dangerous to human life.
• Large Fault currents are more hazardous in igniting

gases.
– Explosion Hazard.
www.eit.edu.au

Solutions
• Phase Segregation (separating phases far apart)
– Eliminates phase-to-phase faults.
• Resistance grounding
– Means lower earth fault currents
– Value can be chosen during design stage to limit current to
desired value - say 400Amps
www.eit.edu.au
Earth faults
• Most faults in systems are due to insulation failures
• The current that will flow depends on the type of system

earthing adopted and the effectiveness of protection earthing
• The current flow will influence

– The touch voltage (in the protective earthing)
– The time of protection operation
www.eit.edu.au

Types of System earthing and

Earth Fault Magnitude
• Unearthed: No current except through the
system capacitance
• Solidly earthed: High, only limited by earth
circuit impedance
• Impedance earthed: Mainly dependant on
neutral impedance
• Tuned earthed: Extremely low (< 10 amps)
www.eit.edu.au
Effects of electricity on humans
Four main factors determining the seriousness of

shock:
• Path of current flow through body
• Magnitude of current
• Time that current flows for
• The body’s electrical resistance
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Role of Earth Fault Protection

• Useful for Indirect Contact only
• Danger is solely decided by touch/step

voltage and time for fault isolation
• Sensitivity of protection is important where

fault loop resistance is likely to be high
www.eit.edu.au
Effects of a current flow through

the body
Perception - Let go - Spasm - 16 Constriction -

tingle - 1 mA 10mA mA 70 - 100 mA -
DEATH
www.eit.edu.au

Resistance of the human body
For design purposes, a resistance of 1000 Ohms is

considered
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Important:
Earth fault loop resistance
• The impedance of the earth fault current loop starting and
ending at the point of earth fault. The earth fault loop
impedance comprises the following starting at the point of
fault.
– The circuit protective conductor

– The consumers earthing terminal and earthing conductor
– The metallic or earth return path as applicable
– The path through the earthed neutral point of the transformer
– The transformer winding and
– The phase conductor from the transformer to the point of fault
www.eit.edu.au

Earth Loop Resistance

and Protection
• Earth Loop Resistance governs flow of earth fault current
• In LV systems, flow through earth return path can cause low

fault currents due to high loop resistance and thereby
protection failure
• Avoid problems by using TN type of connections (TN-S or TN-

C-S/MEN systems where permissible)
• Verify by measurement of loop resistance in branch circuits
• Match fault current to protective device sensitivity

www.eit.edu.au
Neutral CT (Standby Earth Fault)

scheme
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Core balance (zero sequence)

CT Scheme
A Residual Current device (RCD) uses this principle for

obtaining sensitive protection for earth leakage currents
www.eit.edu.au
Summation CT scheme
(4-wire feeders)
www.eit.edu.au

Important
• 4 Wire systems can cause problems due
to:
– Unbalance (zero sequence currents)
– TripleN harmonics
• Ensure correct connections of CTs to
avoid false trips
• With multiple sources: Incorrect relay pick
up-Neutral isolation for avoidance of
parallel return paths
www.eit.edu.au
Protective devices
• Used for sensing and isolating faulty
circuits
• Basic types:
– Direct acting devices: Fuse
– Mounted integrally with breakers: Releases
– External protective devices (relays)
www.eit.edu.au

Fuse-The Basic
Protection Device
• A fuse is the most basic of all protective
devices and performs all the protection
functions normally obtained by several
devices
• A fuse protects against short circuits and
sometimes earth faults
www.eit.edu.au
Fuses - types
• Re-
Re-wireable Type
Fusible wire
– Disadvantages: Open to abuse,
incorrect rating used to keep circuit
in-rating drops as time goes by
– Advantage: Fail safe
• Cartridge Type
– Silver element enclosed in a barrel
of insulating material (sometimes
filled with quartz sand)
www.eit.edu.au

Fuses - types
CARTRIDGE TYPE
Advantages :
– fault energy contained by insulating tube
– Sealed hence does not deteriorate as fast as open type
– Better grading possible
– Quartz sand absorbs energy and melts across ionized metal
path to quench arc
– Faster and can handle very high currents up to 100 kA
– Normal currents are closer to fusing currents today due to
improved materials and design
www.eit.edu.au
Fuses characteristics
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Fusing factor
This British Standard lays down:
• limits for Temperature rise

• Fusing factor - Minimum fusing current = 1.4
Rated cont. current
• Breaking capacity
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Energy “ Let Through”

Energy let through basically refers to the energy let into
the circuit till fusing and its value is proportional to I 2 x t
• Fuses can limit this energey by fusing very quickly -

usually under ¼ cycle
• Circuit breakers can take up to 10 cycles (10 x 20ms =

200 ms) to open i.e., 40 times more energy is released
into the fault !! (compared to a fuse which breaks the
current flow in ¼ cycle)
www.eit.edu.au

Energy “ Let Through”

I (rm s)
I (rms)
2
Energy (I t) let
2
through by fault
Energy (I t) let of one cyc le duration
through by H.R.C.
Fuse-link
Time
Peak H.R.C
Fuse-link
c ut-off
H.R.C Fuse-link duration
Fault current one full

cycle (0.02 second)
www.eit.edu.au
Fuse applications
Steady loads - Normally protect against over load as
well as short circuit.
Fluctuating loads eg. DOL motors with high inrush

compared to normal rating, cranes, etc - Here fuses
generally protect against short circuit only.
www.eit.edu.au

General benefits and limitations

Benefits:
• Serves two purposes: fault detector and interrupter
• Main virtue – SPEED and limiting fault energy
Limitations:
• Can only detect overcurrent faults (not overloads)
– In solidly earthed systems fuses can serve as earth fault
protection also
• Fixed current/time characteristic
• Needs replacing after operating
• Use for LV and MV applications (up to 66kV)
www.eit.edu.au
Circuit breakers and

protective devices
• Fuses act as fault current sensors and interrupters
• Other approaches use a circuit breaker to interrupt short

circuits/earth faults
• Protection can be
– External to the circuit breaker (ex: relays)
– Integrated within the breaker (Trip unit/release)
• External relays need auxiliary power-Expensive,

maintenance-intensive
www.eit.edu.au

Circuit breaker with releases

• Integrated protection-independent, self-
actuating
• Electro-mechanical
– Themo-magnetic and electromagnetic types
for IDMTL+Instantaneous current protection
– Ground fault through an external relay
• Current trend: Integral digital protection-
versatile
www.eit.edu.au
Typical device highlights

• Built-in current sensors (output 0.5 amps)
• Rating plug to decide primary current settings (from p.u.
values)
• A/D converters for signal processing
• Breakers designed to trip with minimum mechanical effort
• Minimum of 20% rated current necessary for operation
• PTs for voltage-dependent protection
• Separate power supply
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Digital protection features

• Compact size-the same basic device used for an entire
range of breaker ratings
• Widely adjustable characteristics
• Built-in ground fault protection by default
• Switching memory for obtaining exact thermal behaviour
of protected equipment
• Other protections (voltage, frequency and reverse power)
• True RMS current sensing
• Panel indication of load current and cause of tripping
• Remote alarms and commands
• Communication capabilities for power management
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Digital protection-ACB
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Digital protection-MCCB
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Features
• Long time delay (IDMT), Short delay
(DMT) and instantaneous settings
• Selectable I2.t feature
• Optional ground fault protection with fixed
or selectable I2.t feature
• Ground fault with summation (internal
input)
• Alternatively with system neutral CT input
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Typical protection curves
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Typical ground fault

protection curves
a) Ground fault delay with b) Time setting-I2.t type

fixed time setting
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Extended protection
• Default current protections are overload,
short circuit and ground faults
• Special protections also available
– Current/Voltage unbalance
• Motor loads against single-phasing conditions
– Over/Under voltage
• Motor applications to prevent restarting after power
interruption
– Reverse Power and Over/Under frequency
• Useful in cogeneration applications
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Other common features

• True RMS current sensing
– Useful to avoid faulty operation of protection in circuits
with high level of harmonic content
• Panel indications
– Uses a built in display on the protection device
• Remote trip alarm and remote commands
– Alarm of trips and remote command for CB on/off
• Communication features
– Ability to store and communicate circuit analog/digital
parameters
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Basic types of relays

• Electromagnetic relay
– Attracted armature instantaneous
– Induction disc type inverse time
• Static relay
– Analog (discrete components)
– Digital (Microprocessor-based)
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Timeline of relay development

Development of Development and
electrical distribution 1930 wide use of Electro- 1960
networks mechanical relays
Development of Static Wide use of Static relays

relays - discrete 1970 1990
- discrete components -
components
Development and manufacture of microprocessor based relays
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Attracted armature type relay
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Attracted armature type relay

• Simple construction
• Instantaneous operation
– No intentional time delay
– Operation time less than 100 m. sec and usually
around 0.05 sec
– High speed relay operation measured in cycles
– Applications in several protection schemes
• High set over current protection, differential protection
– Time delay obtained using a timer relay in cascade (if
required)
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Induction disc type inverse time

relay
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Characteristic of IDMTL relay
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Current Setting IDMT Relay

• Plug setting : This adjusts the setting current by means of
a plug bridge which varies the number of turns on the
upper magnet
• This setting determines the level of current at which the

relay will start or pick-up
• BS142 says - relay must definitely operate at 130%

setting and definitely reset at 70% setting
• Normally the relay picks up at about 105% to 130% of its

plug setting
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Time Multiplier Setting

TM setting : This rotates the tripping
bar attached to the disc closer to or
further away from the tripping contacts
Effectively moves the curve DOWN

the axis
This curve shows the relay will

operate in 3 seconds at 10 times the
plug setting (with the time multiplier =1)
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Digital Relay advantages

Cost
Flexibility
Functionality that is not given by electro-mechanical
relays
Size
CT burden low
DC power drain low
Improved sensitivity and speed
With microprocessor relays any characteristic is
possible
www.eit.edu.au
IEC 60255 Inverse Curves

t = k x β /( (I/I>)α - 1)
where:
t = operate time in secs.
K = time multiplier
I = measured current
I> = set starting current
α & β are constants for curve selection
-
Normal Inverse, Very Inverse and Extremely
Inverse (and any other user defined curves)
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Typical digital relay Schematic
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Static relay features

• High set overcurrent with time delay
– Closer settings due to absence of transient over-reach
• Breaker fail protection built-in

– Impulse to a second trip coil or a back-up breaker
• Digital display of relay parameters and operating values
• Memorized information available after tripping and

cumulative operational values
• Low auxiliary power requirement and burden on

current/voltage transformers
• High input AC variation acceptable

www.eit.edu.au

Information from static relays

• Measurement data of current and voltage
• Information stored by the relay after a fault
situation
• Relay setting values
• Status information on the circuit breakers
and isolators
• Event information
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Integrated protection
and control
www.eit.edu.au

What is an IED?
• An electronic device that possesses some
kind of local intelligence
• IED in protection applications should have:
– Versatile electrical protection functions
– Advanced local control intelligence
– Monitoring abilities
– Capability of extensive communications
www.eit.edu.au
Main functions of IED

• Protection
• Control
• Monitoring
• Metering
• Communications
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Communication
• Communicating all data in previous slides to/from
Control center
• Facilitate remote control, monitoring and

measurement
• Facilitate remote protection settings

• IED forms the basis of modern substation
automation systems
www.eit.edu.au
Thank You For Your Interest

If you are interested in further training, please visit:
The Engineering Institute of Technologies

Online Certificate and
Advanced Diploma programs:
www.eit.edu.au
IDC Technologies
1, 2 & 3 day practical workshops, technical manuals,
onsite training & International conferences:
www.idc-online.com

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IDC Technologies and The Engineering Institute of Technology (EIT)

EIT Micro-Course Series

• Practical, useful with Q & A throughout

• PID loop Tuning / Arc Flash Protection, Functional

• You get the recording and slides

Fundamentals of Power System Protection - Free Webinar 1

The nuts and bolts of

Fundamentals of Power System Protection - Free Webinar 2

• What are protected?

• Why are they protected?

• How are they protected?

Power System Protection

Fundamentals of Power System Protection - Free Webinar 3

Role of Power system protection

1. To safeguard the entire system to ensure

2. To minimize damage and repair costs.

3. To ensure safety of personnel.

Power System Protection:

Fundamentals of Power System Protection - Free Webinar 4

Protection system components

Fundamentals of Power System Protection - Free Webinar 5

• Transformer faults - Not always common but economics

• Busbar Faults - Catastrophic but duplication is more

• A protection system must work for all the types of faults it

• Protection must operate at the least possible value of the

Fundamentals of Power System Protection - Free Webinar 6

Active vs. Passive

Active vs. Passive

Active fault types (solid and incipient)

Fundamentals of Power System Protection - Free Webinar 7

Active vs. Passive

Passive fault types

Types of Three-Phase Faults

(A) Phase-to-ground (E) Three Phase-To-ground

Fundamentals of Power System Protection - Free Webinar 8

Magnitudes of fault currents

• ground currents can be limited by grounding the neutral

• Phase fault currents can not be controlled

Transient and permanent faults

• Permanent - the insulation has broken down permanently

Fundamentals of Power System Protection - Free Webinar 9

• Phase Faults (limited only by positive

• This leads to long outage times.

• Heavy currents in earth bonding gives rise to high

• Large Fault currents are more hazardous in igniting

Fundamentals of Power System Protection - Free Webinar 10

• The current that will flow depends on the type of system

• The current flow will influence

Fundamentals of Power System Protection - Free Webinar 11

Types of System earthing and

Effects of electricity on humans

Four main factors determining the seriousness of

Fundamentals of Power System Protection - Free Webinar 12

Role of Earth Fault Protection

• Danger is solely decided by touch/step

• Sensitivity of protection is important where

Effects of a current flow through

Perception - Let go - Spasm - 16 Constriction -

Fundamentals of Power System Protection - Free Webinar 13

Resistance of the human body

For design purposes, a resistance of 1000 Ohms is

– The circuit protective conductor

Fundamentals of Power System Protection - Free Webinar 14