In an 

electric power system, switchgear is the combination of

electrical disconnect switches, fuses or circuit breakers used to
control, protect and isolate electrical equipment. Switchgears are used
both to de-energize equipment to allow work to be done and to clear 
downstream. This type of equipment is directly linked to the
reliability of the electricity supply.

A switchgear or electrical switchgear is a generic term which

includes all the switching devices associated with mainly power
system protection. It also includes all devices associated with control,
metering and regulating of electrical power system. Assembly of such
devices in a logical manner forms switchgear. In other words
apparatus used for switching, controlling and protecting the electrical
circuits and equipment is known as switchgear. This is very
basic definition of switchgear.
Operating States of a Power System:
1. Normal or secure state:
In the normal operating state, the system is said to be secure and all
constraints like voltages at nodes, real and reactive power generation,
real and reactive power flows are satisfied. The aim of the power
system is to keep the operating state of the power system to lie in the
normal state. Even though this is a stable operating state, any slight
disturbance will take it to the abnormal state.
2. Abnormal or insecure state:
In the event of a disturbance, like generator outage or line outage, the
operating conditions change and the variables like nodes voltages and
powers (real and reactive); real and reactive power flows violate the
operating limits or constraints. The abnormal state or insecure state is
further classified in to the following states; a. alert b. emergency c. in-
extermis (or islanding)
Introduction to Electrical Faults
Electrical networks, machines and equipments are often subjected to
various types of faults while they are in operation. When a fault
occurs, the characteristic values (such as impedance) of the machines
may change from existing values to different values till the fault is
cleared.

There may be lot of probabilities of faults to appear in the power

system network, including lighting, wind, tree falling on lines,
apparatus failure, etc.

Electrical Faults

A fault in an electric power system can be defined as, any abnormal

condition of the system that involves the electrical failure of the
equipment, such as , transformers, generators, busbars, etc.

The fault inception also involves in insulation failures and conducting

path failures which results short circuit and open circuit of
conductors.

Under normal or safe operating conditions, the electric equipments in

a power system network operate at normal voltage and current ratings.
Once the fault takes place in a circuit or device, voltage and current
values deviates from their nominal ranges.

The faults in power system causes over current, under voltage,

unbalance of the phases, reversed power and high voltage surges. This
results in the interruption of the normal operation of the network,
failure of equipments, electrical fires, etc.

Usually power system networks are protected with switchgear

protection equipments such as circuit breakers and relays in order to
limit the loss of service due to the electrical failures.
Types of Faults
Electrical faults in three-phase power system mainly classified into
two types, namely open and short circuit faults. Further, these faults
can be symmetrical or unsymmetrical faults. Let us discuss these
faults in detail.

Open Circuit Faults

These faults occur due to the failure of one or more conductors. The
figure below illustrates the open circuit faults for single, two and three
phases (or conductors) open condition.

The most common causes of these faults include joint failures of

cables and overhead lines, and failure of one or more phase of circuit
breaker and also due to melting of a fuse or conductor in one or more
phases.

Open circuit faults are also called as series faults. These are
unsymmetrical or unbalanced type of faults except three phase open
fault.

Consider that a transmission line is working with a balanced load

before the occurrence of open circuit fault. If one of the phase gets
melted, the actual loading of the alternator is reduced and this cause to
raise the acceleration of the alternator, thereby it runs at a speed
slightly greater than synchronous speed. This over speed causes over
voltages in other transmission lines.

Thus, single and two phase open conditions can produce the
unbalance of the power system voltages and currents that causes great
damage to the equipments.

Causes
Broken conductor and malfunctioning of circuit breaker in one or
more phases.

Effects

 Abnormal operation of the system

 Danger to the personnel as well as animals
 Exceeding the voltages beyond normal values in certain parts of
the network, which further leads to insulation failures and
developing of short circuit faults.
Although open circuit faults can be tolerated for longer periods than
short circuit faults, these must be removed as early as possible to
reduce the greater damage.

Short Circuit Faults

A short circuit can be defined as an abnormal connection of very low
impedance between two points of different potential, whether made
intentionally or accidentally.

These are the most common and severe kind of faults, resulting in the
flow of abnormal high currents through the equipment or transmission
lines. If these faults are allowed to persist even for a short period, it
leads to the extensive damage to the equipment.
Short circuit faults are also called as shunt faults. These faults are
caused due to the insulation failure between phase conductors or
between earth and phase conductors or both.

The various possible short circuit fault conditions include three phase
to earth, three phase clear of earth, phase to phase, single phase to
earth, two phase to earth and phase to phase plus single phase to earth
as shown in figure.

The three phase fault clear of earth and three phase fault to earth are
balanced or symmetrical short circuit faults while other remaining
faults are unsymmetrical faults.
Causes
These may be due to internal or external effects

Internal effects include breakdown of transmission lines or

equipment, aging of insulation, deterioration of insulation in
generator, transformer and other electrical equipments, improper
installations and inadequate design.
External effects include overloading of equipment, insulation
failure due to lighting surges and mechanical damage by public.
Effects

Arcing faults can lead to fire and explosion in equipment such

as transformers and circuit breakers.
Abnormal currents cause the equipment to get overheated,
which further leads to reduction of life span of their insulation.
The operating voltages of the system can go below or above
their acceptance values that creates harmful effect to the service
rendered by the power system.
The power flow is severely restricted or even completely

blocked as long as the short circuit fault persists.
Symmetrical and Unsymmetrical Faults
As discussed above that faults are mainly classified into open and
short circuit faults and again these can be symmetrical or
unsymmetrical faults.

Symmetrical Faults
A symmetrical fault gives rise to symmetrical fault currents that are
displaced with 1200 each other. Symmetrical fault is also called as
balanced fault. This fault occurs when all the three phases are
simultaneously short circuited.
These faults rarely occur in practice as compared with unsymmetrical
faults. Two kinds of symmetrical faults include line to line to line (L-
L-L) and line to line to line to ground (L-L-L-G) as shown in figure
below.

rough occurrence of symmetrical faults is in the range of 2 to 5% of

the total system faults. However, if these faults occur, they cause a
very severe damage to the equipment even though the system remains
in balanced condition.

The analysis of these faults is required for selecting the rupturing

capacity of the circuit breakers, choosing set-phase relays and other
protective switchgear. These faults are analysed on per phase basis
using bus impedance matrix or Thevenins’s theorem.

Unsymmetrical Faults
The most common faults that occur in the power system network are
unsymmetrical faults. This kind of fault gives rise to unsymmetrical
fault currents (having different magnitudes with unequal phase
displacement). These faults are also called as unbalanced faults as it
causes unbalanced currents in the system.
Up to the above discussion, unsymmetrical faults include both open
circuit faults (single and two phase open condition) and short circuit
faults (excluding L-L-L-G and L-L-L).

The figure below shows the three types of symmetrical faults

occurred due to the short circuit conditions, namely phase or line to
ground (L-G) fault, phase to phase (L-L) fault and double line to
ground (L-L-G) fault.

A single line-to-ground (LG) fault is one of the most common faults

and experiences show that 70-80 percent of the faults that occur in
power system are of this type. This forms a short circuit path between
the line and ground. These are very less severe faults compared to
other faults.

A line to line fault occur when a live conductor get in contact with
other live conductor. Heavy winds are the major cause for this fault
during which swinging of overhead conductors may touch together.
These are less severe faults and its occurrence range may be between
15-20%.

In double line to ground faults, two lines come into the contact with
each other as well as with ground. These are severe faults and the
occurrence these faults is about 10% when compared with total
system faults.

Unsymmetrical faults are analysed using methods of unsymmetrical

components in order to determine the voltage and currents in all parts
of the system. The analysis of these faults is more difficult compared
to symmetrical faults.

This analysis is necessary for determining the size of a circuit breaker

for largest short circuit current. The greater current usually occurs for
either L-G or L-L fault.

Causes of symmetrical and unsymmetrical 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.
Effects of symmetrical and unsymmetrical 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
Current Limiting Reactors for Power System application

"A current limiting reactor, also called a series reactor, is a coil which
has high inductive reactance as compared to its resistance." 

These reactors are used to limit the short circuit current and the effect
of resulting voltage disturbances during fault conditions. The short
circuit currents depend upon the generating capacity, voltage at the
fault point and the total reactance between the generators and the fault
point.

In large interconnected systems, the total rating of the generators is

very high and also, when the system is extended by the addition of
more generating units, the fault currents are also increased. So the
fault current to be interrupted by the same circuit breaker will become
greater than the earlier value. These short circuit currents may be
large enough to cause damage to the line and other equipment’s of the
power system network.

The short circuit current can be kept within safe limits by increasing
the reactance between the source and the fault. Thus, there is a need
of providing a protective reactor. By including a reactor or few
reactors at strategic locations, the short circuit currents at different
points in the power system can be reduced. 

The reactors allow free interchange of power under normal conditions

but under short circuit conditions the disturbance is limited to the
faulty section. As the resistance of the reactors is very small, thus the
efficiency of the system is not affected much.
 Main functions of Current Limiting Reactors:
The primary functions of a current limiting reactor are:
1.      To reduce the flow of current into a short circuit so as to protect the
power system apparatus and parts of the system from excessive
mechanical stress and overheating.
2.      To reduce the magnitude of voltage disturbances caused by short
circuits.
3.      To localize the faults by limiting the current that flows into the
fault from other healthy feeders or part of the system.
4.      To reduce the duty imposed on switching equipments during short
circuits.

Construction of Current Limiting Reactor:

Reactors are normally of two types:
1.      Dry type, and
2.      Oil immersed type.
In air cored dry type reactor, the core is of air and the whole
construction of the reactor is free from ferromagnetic materials. The
winding of the reactor is rigidly placed on glass-reinforced synthetic
resin supports. Due to the absence of iron, the reactance remains fairly
constant during the flow of heavy current. Dry type reactors are
usually cooled by natural ventilation and sometimes provided with
forced air and heat exchanger auxiliaries. These reactors occupy
relatively large space and are used only up to 33 kV.
Oil immersed reactors are used for voltages above 33 kV. These
reactors are similar to power transformers in several aspects. They are
either without iron core or have gaped iron core. Cooling is similar to
that of power transformers. The coil assembly is oil immersed and is
 enclosed in a tank. Laminated iron shields are provided around the
outer conductors so as to avoid the entering of magnetic flux in the
surrounding iron parts. Oil immersed reactors have the advantage of
smaller size, high thermal capacity and higher safety against flash-
overs.

Drawbacks of Reactors:
The main drawbacks of a reactor are:
1.      The total percentage reactance of the system is increased, thus
causing an increase in the reactive voltage drop.
2.      The power factor is decreased.

Location of Current Limiting Reactor:

By including a reactor or few reactors at strategic locations, the short
circuit currents at different points can be reduced. The reactors may
be connected in –
1.      Series with the generator (Generator Reactor),
2.      Series with each feeder (Feeder Reactor),
3.      between bus-bar sections (Bus-bar Reactor)
When a reactor is connected in between the generator and the bus, the
reactor is known as generator reactor. Modern alternators are designed
to have sufficiently large reactance (may be 2.0 p.u.) to protect
themselves against dead 3-phase short circuits at its terminals. With
such a large reactance the current during short circuits at terminals
may be less than full load current therefore, externals reactors are not
required. Current limiting reactors are only used with old generators
having low values of reactance.
Feeder reactors are connected in series with the feeders. The
advantage is that the voltage of the bus does not drop substantially in
the event of fault on any one feeder. Thus, other generators continue
to supply the load and other feeders are also not affected. But there is
constant voltage drop and power loss during normal operation in case
of feeder reactors. Cost-wise feeder reactors are expensive.
Bus-bar reactors are connected between bus sections. Two systems of
bus-bar reactors are common. They are Ring system and the Tie-bar
or the Star system. In the ring bus-bar system, under normal operation
each generator supplies to the feeder connected to its own section and
thus there will be no current through the reactors (under normal
operation). Therefore there is no voltage drop or power loss in the
reactor during normal operation. In case of fault on any one feeder,
only one generator feeds the fault while the current from the other
generator is limited because of the bus-bar reactor. This system
facilitates parallel operation of systems and is extensively employed
for plants of moderate output.

The tie-bar system is better and more flexible than the ring system. In
this system, the generators are connected to the common bus-bar (tie-
bar) through the reactors but the feeders are fed from the generator
side of the reactors

In the ring system the short circuit current due to a fault on any bus
bar section, is fed from the generators connected to other sections
through one reactor, whereas in the tie-bar system the current flows
through two reactors in series. Therefore this system requires only
half the reactance compared to the ring system. 

In the tie-bar system, the short circuit MVA or the short circuit
current is independent of the number of bus-bar sections. Thus, extra
generators may be added to the system without addition of extra
circuit breakers or without increasing the existing reactance.
Important Elements for Power System Protection
Switchgear
Consists of mainly bulk oil circuit breaker, minimum oil circuit
breaker, SF6 circuit breaker, air blast circuit breaker and vacuum
circuit breaker etc. Different operating mechanisms such as solenoid,
spring, pneumatic, hydraulic etc. are employed in the circuit breaker.
Circuit breaker is the main part of protection system in power system
and it automatically isolate the faulty portion of the system by
opening its contacts.

Protective Gear
Consists of mainly power system protection relays like current relays,
voltage relays, impedance relays, power relays, frequency relays, etc.
based on operating parameter, definite time relays, inverse time
relays, stepped relays etc. as per operating characteristic, logic wise
such as differential relays, over fluxing relays etc. During fault the
protection relay gives trip signal to the associated circuit breaker for
opening its contacts.
Station Battery
All the circuit breakers of electrical power system are DC (Direct
Current) operated. Because DC power can be stored in battery and if
situation comes when total failure of incoming power occurs, still the
circuit breakers can be operated for restoring the situation by the
power of storage station battery. Hence, the battery is another
essential item of the power system. Some time it is referred as the
heart of the electrical substation. An electrical substation battery or
simply a station battery containing a number of cells accumulate
energy during the period of availability of AC supply and discharge at
the time when relays operate so that relevant circuit breaker is tripped
at the time failure of incoming AC power.
Back-up protection 

Advantages of Back-up Protection

Back-up protection is provided for the following reasons
 If due to some reason, the Main protection fails, the Back-up
protection serves the purpose of protection.
o Main protection can fail due to failure of one of the
components in the protective system such as relay, auxiliary
relay CT, PT, trip circuit, circuit-breaker, etc. If the primary
protection fails, there must be an additional protection,
otherwise the fault may remain uncleared, resulting in a
disaster.
 When main protection is made inoperative for the purpose of
maintenance, testing, etc. the Back-up protection acts like main
protection.
o As a measure of economy, Back-up protection is given
against short-circuit protection and generally not for other
abnormal conditions. The extent to which back-up protection
is provided, depends upon economic and technical
considerations,
o The cost of back-up protection is justified on the basis of
probability of failure of individual component in protection
system, cost of the protected equipment, importance of
protected equipment, location of protected equipment, etc.
Primary Protection 
Below is the power system protection scheme which is designed to
protect the power system parts and components.

As shown in below fig, each line associated with over current relay
that protect the lines from faults. So, if a fault happens on any line, it
will be cleared by its relay and circuit breaker.

This is called primary or main protection and acts as a first line

defender.

The service record of primary relaying is very high with well over
90% of all operations being correct.

But this is not always the case, sometimes faults are not illuminated
by the primary or main protection system i.e. circuit breaker and relay
system because of trouble within the relays, circuit breakers or wiring
system in different conditions.

In those conditions, Secondary or backup protection system does the

required job Primary Protection.
Primary protection may fail due to the following reasons

 Failure of DC supply to the tripping Circuit

 Failure in relay operating current or voltage

 Failure in circuit breaker tripping mechanism

 Failure of main protective relay operation

 Failure in the wiring of relaying system

 Failure of CTs or PTs operation

Secondary Protection

Back-up protection is very important for stable and reliable power

system
As we know that, it is not possible to design a 100% secure and
efficient system because there are possibilities of failure in the
connected CTs, PTs, circuit breaker etc. in the system. If it happens,
then it will destroy our whole switching system.

If the primary protection operation falls into trouble, then secondary

protection disconnects the faulty part from the system. Moreover,
when we disconnect primary protection for testing or maintenance
purpose, then secondary or back-up protection will act as primary
protection. In the above fig, relay “X” (1 Sec time setting) provides
backup protection for each of the four connected lines to the main
bus.

In addition, a larger part is disconnected then when primary relaying

functions correctly. Therefore, greater emphasis should be placed on
the better maintenance of primary relaying which is economical.

Types of Secondary or backup protection

 Relay Backup Protection

 Breaker Backup Protection

 Remote Backup Protection

 Centrally Co-ordinate Backup Protection

Relay Back-up
Same breaker is used by both main and back-up protection, but the
protective systems are different. Separate trip coils may be provided
for the same breaker.

Breaker Back-up
Different breakers are provided for main and back-up protection,
both the breakers being in the same station

Remote back-up
The main and back-up protections provided at different stations and
are completely independent.

Centrally Coordinated Back-up

The system having central control can be provided with centrally
controlled back-up. Central control continuously supervises the load
flow and frequency in the system. The information about load flow
and frequency is assessed continuously.
If one of the components in any part of the-system fails, (e.g. a fault
on a transformer, in some station) the load flow in the system is
affected. The central coordinating station receives information about
the abnormal condition through high frequency carrier signals.
The stored programme in the digital computer determines the correct
switching operation, as regards severity of fault, system stability,