Student Name: SENG OU

ID Card: e20160596

Power System Architecture and Protection

QUIZ

1. The benefits and drawbacks of overhead network and underground network

❖ Overhead Network
• Benefits
- High Power transmission.
- Low installation and material cost.
- Long distance transmissions.
- The fault or damage in overhead lines can easily locate.
- Maintenance and repairing of the lines are easier.
- Extension or joining on overhead lines can be performed easily and also it
facilitates easy replacing.
• Drawbacks
- It is exposed to the surrounding, safety risk is high.
- A continuous pathway for the line creates obstructions.
- Vulnerable to lightning strikes.
- Areas pollution where the lines are installed.
- Some lines are installed in way of low flying aircraft or drone, which could
be the danger.
❖ Underground Network
• Benefits
- It is safer from lightning strikes.
- It creates no obstructions.
- Reducing visual impact since it is installed underground.
- It is less affected by the weather condition.
- It is less transmission line losses and increases reliability of power supply.
• Drawbacks
- Installation process through various geographic areas has high difficulties,
because of ground excavation.
- The installation cost is high as requiring a continuous trench or concrete
ducts for cable installation.
- High material cost due to the requirement of thick and insulated
conductors.
- High cost of maintenance because the line needs to dig up before any
repair activities and required to reinstall again.
- High complications in fault detection and maintenance.
- High voltage transmission is difficult in underground transmission.
- Limited by thermal capacity.
2. The characteristics, advantages and disadvantages of Radial Configuration and Loop
Configuration
• Radial configuration: is a system, which has only one power source for a group
of customers and widely used in less people area.
▪ Advantages
- Simplest distribution system connection circuit
 - Simplest as fed at only end.
- The initial cost is low.
- It is useful when the generating is at low voltage.
- Preferred when the station is located at the center of the load.
- More economical for some areas which have a low load requirement
- Require less amount of cables
- It has a low maintenance
▪ Disadvantages
- The end of distributor near to the substation gets heavily loaded.
- When load on the distributor changes, the clients at the distant end
of the distributor face serious voltage fluctuations.
- As users are dependent on single feeder and distributor, a fault on
any of these two causes interruption in supply to all the users
connected to that distributor.
-The consumers at the distant end of the distributor would be
subjected to serious voltage fluctuations when the load on the
distributor changes.
• Loop Configuration: is a system which usually tied into an alternate power
source. By placing switches in strategic locations, the utility can supply power
to the customer from either direction. If one source of power fails, switches are
thrown automatically or manually, and power can be fed to customers from
other source.
▪ Advantages
- Provide better continuity of service than radial system with only short
interruptions for switching.
- The fault itself can then be repaired with a minimum of customer
interruptions
▪ Disadvantages
- Loop system is more expensive since it consists of more switches and
conductors.
- Loop system is more complicated.
3. The essential of protection system is to detach the faulty section from the system in
order to make the rest of the portion work without any disturbance. In addition, it is
used to protect the power system and prevent the flow of fault current. It can aid in
preventing the continuation of flow by quickly disconnecting the short circuit.
4. The main Principles and Elements of Protection System:
❖ The main principle of protection system are selectivity, stability, sensitively and speed.
- Selectivity: To detect and isolate the faulty item only.
- Stability: To leave all healthy circuits intact to ensure continuity or supply.
- Sensitivity: To detect even the smallest fault, current or system abnormalities and
operate correctly at its setting before the fault causes irreparable damage.
- Speed: To operate speedily when it is called upon to do so, thereby minimizing
damage to the surroundings and ensuring safety to personnel.
❖ The elements of protection system
- Voltage and current transformers: is to monitor and give accurate feedback about
the healthiness of a system.
- Protective relays: is to convert the signal from the monitoring devices, and provide
instruction in order to open a circuit under the fault conditions or to alarm when the
equipment being protected, is approaching towards possible destruction.
- Fuses: is self-destructing to save the downstream equipment being protected.
- Circuit breaker: is used to make circuits carrying enormous currents, and to break
the circuit carrying the fault current for a few cycles based on feedback from the
relays.
- DC supply system: to give uninterrupted power source to the relays and breakers,
that is independent of the main power source being protected.
- Communication channel: is dedicated optical fiber (dark fiber) or multiplexed
networks.
- Control cable: is used in extra high voltage (EHV), high voltage (HV) transmission,
medium voltage (MV) sub-transmission, and MV / low voltage (LV) distribution
applications. The protection principles to use for cable are similar with the ones for
overhead transmission line.
5. The advantages of the high-speed protection in protection system:
- Power Quality Improvement: is reduce the effects and related economic losses of
voltage sags that originate from short circuits in the power system as sag duration
and to reduce the time to clear the fault or short circuit. This can be accomplished
with the application of high-speed line protection.
- Power System Stability Improvement: is one of the main reasons for pursuing faster
transmission line protection. Clearing faults faster than the critical fault-clearing
time ensures the stability of power systems and avoids blackouts.
 - Protective of equipment: is used to keep the transformer healthy since the
transformer is one of the most critical assets in a transmission substation. Repairing
or replacing a transformer is a very expensive, difficult, and time-consuming task.
6. To protect the power transformer system, they have to protect such as
- Winding Temperature Indicator (WTI) alarm and trip
- Oil Temperature Indicator (OTI) alarm and trip
- BUCHHOLZ alarm and trip
- Pressure Relieve Valve (PRV) trip
- On-Load Tap Changer (OLCC) PRV trip
- Differential protection
- Restricted earth fault protection
- Overload protection
- Over-flux protection
- Back up over current protection
- Back up earth fault protection
- Online dissolve gas analysis
- Oil surge relay in OLTC chamber
- Low oil level indicator
- Fire-fighting system.
Phase Faults: Phase to phase faults or three-phase faults do not flow through the
earthing arrangement and therefore are limited by winding impedance only. The
value of winding impedance is deliberately designed into the transformer in order
to limit the maximum short circuit current. It is achieved by designing the leakage
reactance flux which does not link the primary and secondary windings to give the
desired short-circuit level.
Protection element: To remove these faults Buchholz surge and differential
relays can be used.
Ground Faults (Earth Faults): The flow of earth fault current is dependent on
their being a presence of a zero-sequence path. The ampere turn balance between
the secondary and primary windings must be maintained. The magnitude of the
transformer earth fault current is depended on the method of earthing, the
impedance of winding, the transformer connection and position of the fault on the
winding. Solidly earthed transformer has their winding impedance to limit the earth
fault current. Earth faults are the most common type of faults in the transformer.
 Protection element: to reduce the earth’s fault additional impedance can be
added to the zero-sequence current paths by using earthing transformers and
resistors.
Inter-turn Faults: These faults occur in the high voltage winding because of the
degradation of the insulation and it could be caused by the voltage doubling at the
HV terminal. The voltage doubling can be caused by lightning or switching. The
inter-turn faults cause localized extreme hot spots to occur as the faulted turns carry
huge currents and this would badly affect the winding insulation.
Protection element: These faults can be detected by using the Buchholz gas
device and differential relay.
Oil Leaks: Transformer oil leakage could cause flashover between windings and
end connections, resulting in loss of oil reduce winding insulation as well as
producing abnormal temperature rises.
Protection element: In order to operate the transformer at the full rating, the
cooling system must work properly.
Overload: The effect of any overload is an increase of the temperature of oil and
windings of the transformer with a reduction of its life time.
Protection element: The protection of a transformer against the overloads is
performed by a dedicated protection usually called thermal overload relay.
7. Describe the characteristics, advantages and disadvantages of using Fuse, Circuit
Breaker (CB) and RCOB for low voltage system (LV).
❖ For Fuse
• Advantages
- It is the cheapest form of protection, and it does need any maintenance.
- Its operation is completely automatic and requires less time as
compared to circuit breakers.
- The smaller sizes of fuse element impose a current limiting effect
under short-circuit conditions.
- Its inverse time-current characteristic enables its use for overload
protection.
• Disadvantages
- Considerable time is required in replacing a fuse after the operation.
 - The current-time characteristic of a fuse cannot always be correlated with
that of the protective device.
❖ For circuit breaker (CB)
• Advantages
- They are smaller in size than fuses.
- Better versions may have electronic trips so they can adjust trip curve to suite
circuit design.
- Easier for end user to reset.
- No waiting to reset.
- No cost associated with resetting unlike cost of replacement fuses.
- Easier when ground fault protection is needed.
• The disadvantages
- More expensive than fused switches
- When a circuit breaker trips, you lose all power
- Harder to coordinate fault selectivity
- Harder and more costly to obtain high short circuit interrupting capacities
❖ For RCBO
• Advantages
- It is used to protect against earth fault as well as Electrical shock
- The Main purpose RCCB is to protect the human from residual current
• Disadvantages
- RCCB do not have short circuit protection
- RCDs don’t offer protection against current overloads
- Nuisance tripping of RCCB.
- RCD will not protect against a socket outlet being wired with its live and neutral
terminals the wrong way round.
- RCD will not protect against live-neutral shocks, because the current in the live
and neutral is balanced. So if you touch live and neutral conductors at the same
time (e.g., both terminals of a light fitting), you may still get a nasty shock.
- RCCB is higher cost.
8. Draw the protective zones for the power system which breakers should open for a fault
at (a) P1, (b) P2, and (c) P3.
a. The breakers B12a and B21a will be opened if the fault occurs at P1 .
b. The breaker B24a, B24b, B23, B21a and B21b will be opened if the fault occurs
at P2 .
c. The breaker B23 will be opened if the fault occur at P3 .

Figure: Protective system