2362
4, OCTOBER 2007
Mitigating Ferroresonance in Voltage Transformers
in Ungrounded MV Networks
Wojciech Piasecki, Marek Florkowski, Senior Member, IEEE, Marek Fulczyk, Member, IEEE, Pentti Mahonen, and
Wieslaw Nowak
Abstract—In this paper, it is shown that ferroresonant oscilla-
tions involving voltage transformers (VTs) may be initiated by
switching transients in ungrounded medium-voltage networks. It
was demonstrated that various modes of ferroresonant oscillations
may exist for the same VT type depending on the initial conditions
and on the network capacitance. As the ferroresonant oscillations
pose a risk to the VTs due to large overcurrents in the primary
windings, the VTs operating in ungrounded networks should be
protected against this phenomenon. The analysis of the classic
method of protecting the VTs by means of connecting the damping
resistor to the open-delta-arranged auxiliary winding has shown
that often a very low ohmic value of the resistor is required
to provide reliable protection. A new method of protecting the
VTs against ferroresonance with a compact active load was thus
developed.
Index Terms—Ferroresonance, modeling, voltage transformers.
I. INTRODUCTION
V OLTAGE transformers are characterized by a special con-
struction and their rated power is typically very low due to
their metrological rather than power-supply function. Nominal
primary currents in the voltage-transformer (VT) winding are
typically of the order of single milliamps at the primary voltage
ranging from several up to tens of kilovolts. In ungrounded net-
works, phase-to-ground-connected VTs may experience the fer-
roresonance phenomenon as the neutral point of the system is
not grounded and, thus, zero-sequence oscillations are weakly
damped. The compact construction of modern epoxy-resin-cast
VTs results in the low thermal power ratings of the VTs. Since in
the case of the ferroresonance, the primary currents may reach
amp values, thermal power generated in the winding may easily
result in significant overheating and, finally, in the damage of
the primary winding which, in turn, leads to the ground fault.
Therefore, the awareness of this problem is necessary so that an
appropriate mitigation method can be applied.
The basic principle of designing magnetic circuits of elec-
trical apparatus and machinery operating in power networks is
to ensure that the magnetic flux density does not exceed the sat-
uration level characteristic for the given material used. This cri-
terion has to be fulfilled for normal operating conditions for a
Manuscript received April 3, 2006; revised November 6, 2006. Paper no.
TPWRD-00186-2006.
W. Piasecki, M. Florkowski and M. Fulczyk are with the ABB Corporate
Research, Kraków 31-038, Poland (e-mail: marek.florkowski@abb.com.pl).
P. Mahonen is with the ABB Vaasa, Vaasa FIN-65101, Finland (e-mail:
pennti.mahonen@fi.abb.com).
W. Nowak is with the Department of Electrical Power, AGH University of
Science and Technology, Krakow 30-059, Poland (e-mail: wiesio@agh.edu.pl).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRD.2007.905383
0885-8977/$25.00 © 2007 IEEE
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 22, NO.
given device. It is, however, common that the magnetic cores
are temporarily subjected to saturation during transient network
phenomena, for example, such as the energizing process of a
power transformer. Magnetic saturation results in the inductive
component becoming nonlinear. The presence of the nonlinear
inductance, combined with capacitance in the electrical circuits,
results in the hazard of the well-known ferroresonance phenom-
enon. Ferroresonant phenomena pose risks to electrical power
networks, because the magnitude of voltages and/or currents
may significantly exceed the maximum allowable values for a
given piece of equipment. Vast literature exists, describing the
problem of the ferroresonance phenomenon in power networks
(e.g., [1]–[4]) as well as solutions aiming to mitigate it (e.g.,
[4]). A comprehensive summary of the ferroresonance problem
was also presented in [6].
Due to the complexity of this nonlinear phenomenon,
avoiding the ferroresonance-related risk to the equipment often
requires a detailed case-by-case study, as simple analytical
methods are neither sufficiently accurate nor reliable.
The aim of the work presented in this paper was to analyze
the ferroresonance phenomenon for a benchmark model corre-
sponding to a practical situation of an ungrounded MV network
using the transient simulation approach. The ultimate goal, how-
ever, was to develop a practical approach toward protecting the
VTs against the ferroresonance-related risk.
II. ANALYSIS OF THE FERRORESONANCE INVOLVING
VTS IN AN UNGROUNDED MV NETWORK
A. Circuit Model
For the sake of the analysis of the ferroresonance phenom-
enon in practical cases of VTs, a nonlinear transformer model
was used, characterized by a nonlinear magnetizing current-
flux-linked characteristic, described by a three-term polynom-
inal function
for
(1)
for
where is the winding current; is the flux link; and , , , ,
and are constants. As was shown in the literature (i.e., in [7]
and in [8]) as well as in the former work by the authors [9], ac-
curate modeling of the deep saturation region of the VT, having
a critical influence on the results of the analysis, requires the de-
gree of the polynominal function of the order of tens. The use
of a three-term polynominal instead of a two-therm polynominal
widely used in literature allows for more precise approximation
of the knee section of the magnetizing characteristic.
PIASECKI et al.: MITIGATING FERRORESONANCE IN VOLTAGE TRANSFORMERS 2363

Fig. 2. Definition of the stimulus.

Fig. 1. Equivalent circuit of the network model used in the analysis.

For the analysis of the three phase-to-ground-connected VTs

in the network, a simplified model of an ungrounded network
shown in Fig. 1 was used.
The circuit is comprised of the following:
Fig. 3. Current-flux-linked characteristic of the VT.
• resistance and inductance , representing the short-
circuit power of the system;
• phase-to-ground capacitance of the MV network (in- this case, the voltage source is described in the following
cluding the winding capacitance of the VT, on the order form:
of single nanofarads);
• resistance of the primary winding of the VT; for
(2)
• nonlinear magnetizing inductance of the VT described by for
the current-flux-linked characteristic ; where
• ideal transformers (ratio :1) representing the coupling to
the auxiliary windings;
• damping resistor connected to the open-delta arranged (3)
auxiliary windings. is a double-exponential surge model. In particular, for
, ,2 , and , the function
B. Initial Conditions (3) describes the standard 250/2500 s switching surge of peak
value .
In order to determine the range of network parameters for The overvoltage factor for the stimulus is expressed by
which ferroresonant oscillations may be present, two forms of the following formula:
excitation were chosen:
1) switching the sinusoidal voltage sources on at time ;
2) superimposing the standard double-exponential switching (4)
transient on the sinusoidal voltage sources.
In the first case, the three voltage sources form a positive-
sequence three-phase system. In the second case, it has been C. VT Model
assumed that at time , the switching transient is The subject of the study was a voltage trans-
superimposed (see Fig. 2) on a sinusoidal voltage source. In former. The magnetizing nonlinear characteristic of the VT was
2364
Fig. 4. Neutral point voltage after energizing the system at t = 0; E = 130%U
Fig. 5. Dependence of the hazardous capacitance range C 0C
actual network voltage.
measured and the current-flux-linked characteristic described
by (1) was fitted to the experimental points. The fitted function
parameters were , 125 , ,2 , ,
1 , , and . defined before was solved with the use of a dedicated For-
The characteristic of the VT is shown in Fig. 3. For the
analyzed VT, the so-called coefficient defining the distance of
the normal operating point from the saturation level was 1,9. The
resistance of the primary winding and the primary to auxiliary
windings turns ratio for the given VT type were also included
in the model.
The cores of the compact MV VTs are typically fabricated
of oriented steel sheets characterized by very low losses. Iron
losses are commonly included in the equivalent circuit by in-
troducing a resistor in parallel with the magnetizing inductance.
The iron losses for the specific VT type under study were mea-
sured, and the resistance value was calculated as being close
to 2 , which corresponds to the iron losses of less than
10 W. As in the course of the initial simulations, it was found
that the presence of the resistor of such a high value had a neg-
ligible effect on the simulation results and the core losses were
further neglected.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 22, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2007
. Plots obtained for phase-to-ground capacitance ranging from 50 to 200 nF.
on the
Fig. 6. Dependence of the C 0C range on the amplitude of the switching
transient.
D. Analytical Approach
The state equation describing the circuit for the stimuli
tran-coded FerroSim software utilizing the IMSL numerical
libraries. The set of differential equations forming the state
equation is ill-conditioned (the ratio of the smallest and the
largest eigenvalues of the Jacobian is ). Therefore, the
solving algorithm is based on the gear method (procedure
DIVPAG of the IMSL library) using the maximum timestep
and the error tolerance . Using the software de-
scribed, the time-domain analysis of the circuit to the stimuli
defined was performed for various stimuli at various network
and stimuli parameters. The subject of the analysis was the
influence of the following:
• phase-to-ground capacitance ;
• network voltage level;
• damping resistance value ;
• stimulus type
on the type of the circuit response (nonferroresonat/ferrores-
onant, transient/stable ferroresonance, ferroresonance mode).
PIASECKI et al.: MITIGATING FERRORESONANCE IN VOLTAGE TRANSFORMERS
Fig. 7. Neutral point voltage calculated for the switching transient of k
20 to 270 nF.
For the ferroresonant circuit response, the short-time Fourier
transform (STFT) [10] analysis of the time-domain waveforms
was performed in order to determine the mode type of the
ferroresonant oscillations. STFT maps a transient signal into a
two-dimensional function of time and frequency, allowing one
to analyze the time evolution of the circuit behavior.
III. SIMULATION RESULTS
The results of the numerical simulations are grouped into two
categories based on the type of the stimuli initiating the ferrores-
onant oscillations, as the circuit behavior depended strongly on
this initial condition.
A. Transient Response After Energizing the System (at
Depending on the circuit parameters, the transient response
may fall into one of several clearly qualitatively distinctive cat-
egories. This is illustrated in Fig. 4, showing the time-domain
dependence of the neutral point voltage on the value of the net-
work-to-ground capacitance . In all cases, the voltage-source
level was set to 130% of the nominal voltage , and for
the and the corresponding to the short-circuit power of
200 MVA.
For the value greater than a certain critical value
(e.g., in Fig. 4), the oscillations of the neutral
point have the character of a relatively short-time transient. The
period of oscillations increases with time, and the amplitude
of the oscillations decreases monothonically. The network
reaches equilibrium in single seconds. The relatively short
time and low values of overcurrent in the primary windings
generally do not pose a risk to the VTs. The situation is
different when the capacitance is decreased below the
value. In that case, stable and nondecaying ferroresonant
oscillations are initiated. The amplitude of the oscillations
depends on the frequency mode of the ferroresonant oscillations
(see Section II for details), but it may reach 18 kV. When
this zero-sequence voltage is superimposed on the system
voltage, the phase-to-ground-connected VTs experience primary
currents of peak values reaching 1–2 A. The thermal power
2365
= 5; E = 130%U . Plots obtained for phase-to-ground capacitance ranging from
dissipated within the primary winding would
lead to the thermal degradation of the insulation system and,
in consequence, to the VT failure, if no damping means were
applied. Decreasing the network capacitance further below a
second characteristic threshold value results in ferroresonant
oscillations becoming unstable and decaying typically after
several seconds. The conclusion is that the stable ferroresonant
oscillations posing the hazard to the voltage transformers exist
for a certain range of capacitance . A detailed
analysis of the dependence of the and values shows
that the hazardous capacitance range strongly depends on
the actual network voltage level, represented by . This
dependence is shown in Fig. 5.
)
B. Ferroresonant Oscillations Initiated by a Switching
Transient
The analysis of the circuit response to the 250/2500- s
switching transient showed that the range is, in
this case, broader in each voltage level. Moreover, the analysis
showed that more frequency modes of the ferroresonant oscilla-
tions exist for the same circuit topology (this will be discussed
later). This is the feature of the nonlinear circuit for which
various oscillation modes may exist. Triggering the particular
resonant mode depends not only on the circuit parameters, but
also on the initial conditions. Fig. 6 shows the dependence
of the range on the amplitude of the switching
transient obtained for the voltage level .
As mentioned before, the initial conditions and circuit param-
eters may determine the mode of the ferroresonant oscillations
within the circuit of the same topology. The time-domain ex-
amples of the oscillation modes are shown in Fig. 7, presenting
the neutral voltage calculated for and for the
switching overvoltage factor . The examples shown in
Fig. 7 represent typical ferroresonant modes which may exist
in the circuit under study. The STFT was performed on the
time-domain data in order to visualize the difference between
the particular ferroresonant modes. The STFT spectra obtained
for the time-domain signals from Fig. 7 are shown in Fig. 8.
2366 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 22, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2007

Fig. 8. STFT spectra of the time-domain neutral voltage waveforms from Fig. 7 (phase-to-ground capacitance ranging from 20 to 270 nF).

The first case nF) represents the typical chaotic

ferroresonant mode. For this case, no dominant frequency can
be found.
The circuit changes its behavior dynamically by hopping be-
tween various quasistable modes characterized by various fre-
quencies. In the second case nF), the dominant fre-
quency (50 Hz) can be clearly defined in the neutral voltage
spectrum. This so-called harmonic mode is directly stimulated
by the power frequency sources. In the third case nF),
the circuit behaves again in a rather chaotic way. However, the
quasistable resonant modes can be indicated. The 25-Hz sub-
harmonic mode starts to dominate. A further increase of the ca-
pacitance results in stabilizing the ferroresonant mode of this
type (see spectra obtained for 120 nF and for 200 nF).
Further increase of the capacitance results in the appearance
of a low-frequency mode Hz) after a short initial tran- Fig. 9. Ferroresonant capacitance rangeC 0C in the case of the open-
sient. delta-connected damping resistor U = 130%U .
PIASECKI et al.: MITIGATING FERRORESONANCE IN VOLTAGE TRANSFORMERS
Fig. 10. Ferroresonance damping with a 12-
resistor connected to an open-delta-arranged auxiliary windings;
ground capacitance ranging from 50 to 200 nF.
IV. MITIGATING THE FERRORESONANCE
In the case of undamped ferroresonant oscillations, the peak
values of primary currents may reach amp values due to the fact
that the VTs operate within the deep saturation region of the
core. It is thus strictly necessary to use appropriate mitigation
methods in order to avoid thermal damage of the equipment.
Historically, the most commonly used mitigation method is the
resistor connected to the open-delta arranged auxiliary wind-
ings of the three single-phase VTs. The zero-sequence voltage
present at the resistor terminals results in the zero-sequence cur-
rent resulting from the ferroresonant oscillations.
This simple method, however, has a limited applicability in
the case of the modern, compact constructions of the VTs, uti-
lizing low-loss magnetic materials since typical core losses (ori-
ented steel) are lower than 50 W, which has little effect on
the damping properties. Both computer simulations and experi-
ments showed in many cases that the resistance value needed for
efficient damping of the ferroresonant oscillations is very small
and the resulting power dissipated in the damping
resistor is greater than several hundreds of watts.
Fig. 9 shows the simulated effectiveness of the ferroresonant
oscillations damping with the resistor and Fig. 10 presents the
simulated neutral voltage for . It can be seen that
the use of the resistor of a value larger than approximately 12
has a small influence on avoiding the ferroresonance, as it only
decreases the value of , still leaving a broad hazardous
range.
In practice, however, using a damping resistor of such a low
value results in a risk of thermal damage of the VTs during
abnormal network asymmetry resulting from prolonged earth
faults (8-h earth fault withstand test requirement).
There are other known methods of preventing ferroresonance,
such as the use of a saturable inductor in series with a damping
resistor.
This approach, despite its applicability in high-voltage (HV)
capacitive VTs with an intermediate inductive VT, is practically
not used in the MV voltage transformers. The use of the
R–L circuit overcomes the thermal problem in the case of the
earth fault situation. However, the efficiency of damping is
limited (it conducts current only above the saturation level of
2367
U = 130%U . Plots obtained for phase-to-
Fig. 11. New active damping device (VT-Guard) by ABB compared against a
conventional linear resistor.
the inductor) and, thus, a very precise design of the damping
circuit for a specific VT type is required. The use of the
series connection of a saturable inductor and a resistor is
discussed in [11].
This brings about the conclusion that protecting the voltage
transformers against potential failure due to the ferroresonance
requires the use of a damping burden that could be connected
to the secondary windings in a selective way (i.e., the burden
must not be connected in the case of the prolonged earth fault).
This could be achieved by utilizing a ferroresonance detection
system capable of distinguishing between the ferroresonant and
the earth fault situation. Although the detection of the ferrores-
onance is possible, it requires intelligent signal processing, as
various ferroresonant modes and corresponding frequencies (in-
cluding 50 Hz) may exist.
Therefore, an alternative approach was proposed, based on
the concept of limiting the time for which the burden is present,
with the use of a solid-state element. This concept has been im-
plemented in a two-terminal active damping device recently in-
troduced by ABB (Fig. 11).
The burden disconnecting function is achieved with a use of
a positive temperature coefficient (PTC) thermistor connected
in series with the resistor. The small value of the effective resis-
tance at the normal operating conditions results in the
ferroresonant oscillations being damped within a few maximum
oscillation periods. Prolonged zero-sequence voltage resulting
from the earth-fault causes a thermal transition of the PTC ele-
ment into a high-ohmic state, which limits the secondary current
and, thus, the power dissipation in the VTs.
The PTC thermistor is selected so that the low value of the
resistance is maintained for more than 1 s upon the application
2368 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 22, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2007

Fig. 12. Ferroresonance initiated in a 6-kV ungrounded network by connecting a 3-km cable line to the substation; no prevention against ferroresonance is applied.

Fig. 13. Ferroresonance initiated in a 6-kV ungrounded network by connecting a 3-km cable line to the substation damped with the new active device is developed.

of 100 V across the device terminals. At the sustained zero-
sequence presence condition (e.g., due to the prolonged earth
fault), the PTC thermistor smoothly undergoes a transition into
the high ohmic state. The sustained zero-sequence voltage main-
tains the high ohmic state of the PTC element limiting the cur-
rent to the level of less than 0.1 A. At this stage, the temperature
of the PTC element is automatically maintained at the level of
150 C. After clearing the earth fault and restoring the sym-
metry in the network, the PTC, by itself, undergoes a transition
to the low ohmic state. The transition typically takes approxi-
mately 2 min under normal conditions. In addition to the PTC
element, the device comprises a circuitry defining a level of an
insensitivity zone in order to not load the VTs with an unnec-
essary burden in the cases of small natural network asymmetry.
Therefore, at normal operating conditions, the device represents
an almost infinite value of the equivalent resistance.
The ability of the new device to damp the ferroresonant
oscillations was verified experimentally with various types of
voltage transformers. An example of field test results is given
in Figs. 12 and 13. Fig. 12 shows the phase voltages (L1, L2,
and L3) and the currents in two of the three VTs recorded after
connecting a 3-km cable line to an unloaded 6-kV ungrounded
substation. Phase voltages and currents in the windings of
the VTs clearly indicate that the switching event initiated
the undamped ferroresonance in the network. The observed
subharmonic mode (25 Hz) corresponded to the oscillations
simulated for the benchmark model analyzed previously. In the
case of the analyzed 22-kV VT, the 25-Hz oscillations exist for
the capacitance value ranging from 120 nF to 200 nF. In the
case of the 6-kV substation, the 1/2 subharmonic mode was
observed for a higher capacitance value ( – nF for a
3-km section of a typical 6-kV cable).
PIASECKI et al.: MITIGATING FERRORESONANCE IN VOLTAGE TRANSFORMERS
Fig. 13 shows the voltages and the currents recorded with
the new protective device connected to the open-delta-arranged
auxiliary windings. It can be seen that the cable switching event
initiated the ferroresonat oscillations which were damped in less
than 0.2 s.
V. CONCLUSION
1) The presented analysis of the ferroresonance phenomenon
in inductive VTs operating in ungrounded MV networks
indicates that the ferroresonat oscillations can be initiated
as a result of switching operations.
2) It was shown that the ferroresonant oscillations always
result in the presence of the zero-sequence component
superimposed on the phase voltages. Due to the fact that
the cores of the phase-to-ground-connected voltage trans-
formers are saturated, large primary overcurrents exist,
which may lead to VT damage.
3) The sustained ferroresonant oscillations exist for a certain
range of the system phase-to-ground capacitance. It was also
shown that the dangerous capacitance range depends on the
actual network voltage resulting in an increase of the haz-
ardous range for the unloaded or lightly loaded networks.
4) It was shown that for the same VT parameters and network
configuration, various ferroroesonant modes may be initi-
ated, depending on the initial conditions (voltage and stim-
ulus) and on the network capacitance value.
5) The analysis of the traditional method of ferroresonance
mitigation (i.e., connecting a damping resistor to the
open-delta-arranged auxiliary windings of three individual
voltage transformers) demonstrated its limited applica-
bility to the compact modern VTs. The low intrinsic core
losses result in a necessity to use a resistive burden of
low ohmic value and high thermal power. This poses a
thermal problem for the compact windings in the case of
a sustained earth fault. Therefore, the simple protection
method by means of a permanently connected damping
resistor is not efficient, and a more sophisticated approach
toward mitigating the ferroresonance is needed. The new
method proposed, comprising a PTC element, overcomes
the shortcomings of the traditional approach.
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Wojciech Piasecki was born in Poland on May 15,
1966. He received the M.Sc. degree in electronics
from the University of Science and Technology, in
Kraków Poland, Poland, and the Ph.D. degree from
the Jagiellonian University, Kraków.
He has been working for many years in elec-
tromagnetic and electrical phenomena, including
high-frequency and nonlinear modeling of electrical
equipment. Currently, he is a Researcher with the
Corporate Research Center in Kraków. His main
research concentrates around transient network
phenomena analysis.
Marek Florkowski (M’97–SM’06) was born in
Kraków, Poland, on July 3, 1965. He received the
M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electronics from the Uni-
versity of Science and Technology (AGH), Kraków,
in 1990 and 1994, respectively.
Currently, he is responsible for the ABB Corpo-
rate Research Center, Kraków. From 1990 to 1992,
he was with ABB Corporate Research Center, Baden-
Dättwil, Switzerland.
Dr. Florkowski is a member of CIGRE.
Marek Fulczyk (M’04) was born in Poland in 1968.
He received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical
engineering from the Wroclaw University of Tech-
nology, Wroclaw, Poland, in 1993 and 1997, respec-
tively.
In 1997, he became a Research Scientist with ABB
Corporate Research, Kraków, Poland. Currently, he
is a Group Leader of the Electrical and Engineering
Systems. His fields of interests include power system
protection, power system/voltage stability, real-time
collaborative technology, and 3-D modeling and sim-
ulations of phenomena in power systems.
Pentti Mahonen was born in Kokkola, Finland, in
1946. He received the M.Sc. and Techn.Lic. degrees
in power system engineering from Helsinki Univer-
sity of Technology, Helsinki, Finland, in 1971 and
1977, respectively.
In 1972, he became Research Engineer with Oy
Stromberg Ab, later part of ABB, Vaasa, Finland. He
has been working for many years with instrument
transformer technology, including nonconventional
current and voltage sensors. He has also actively
participated in the development of solid insulating
materials and insulations, especially for outdoor use. He is currently responsible
for current and voltage sensing and measuring technologies in medium voltage.
Wieslaw Nowak was born in Kraków, Poland, on
April 14, 1963. He received the M.Sc. and Ph.D.
degrees in engineering from the Faculty of Electrical
Engineering, Automatics, Computer Science and
Electronics, AGH University of Science and Tech-
nology (AGH-UST), Kraków, in 1988 and 1995,
respectively.
In 1987, he joined the Department of Electrical
Power at AGH-UST. His main research interests
include the insulation coordination of power systems
as well as the computer modeling and analysis of
electromagnetic transients.