Wavelet Based Energy Function for
Symmetrical Fault Detection during Power
Swing
Rahul.Dubey, S.R.Samantaray ,Ashok Tripathy, B. Chitti Babu, and Muhammad Ehtesham
Abstract— Fault during power swing is one of the challenging
task for the distance relay functioning. This paper focuses on
developing Wavelet Energy (WE) based function for symmetrical
fault detection during power swing. The process starts at
retrieving the current signal samples during power swing and
processes it through Wavelet Transform to derive detailed
coefficient of wavelet d1 to d7, used to find out energy of the
signal, and called Wavelet Energy (WE). In the case study, the
three-phase symmetrical fault is created in the transmission line
and proposed algorithm detects the fault with in one and half
cycles for 60 Hz system. Simulation results demonstrate the
effectiveness of the proposed approach under time-varying
conditions.
Keywords — Power Swing, Symmetrical Fault, Wavelet Energy,
Wavelet Transform (WT).
I. INTRODUCTION
P ower swing are caused by sudden removal of faults, loss
of synchronism or changes in direction of power flow as a
result of switching and creates oscillations in power flow.
During power swing, the appearance impedance measured by
a distance relay may move in to the tripping zone of the
distance relay characteristics, causing unwanted trip [1]. To
ensure the reliable operation of the distance relay, power
swing blocking function is employed in most of the modern
distance relays to block the operation during pure power
swing [2, 3].
The most conventional power swing blocking method is.
Based on speed (timing) at which the impedance locus travels
in to the operating zones of the relay characteristics. the fault
conditions the apparent impedance trajectory travels faster
compared to the speed of the locus during power swing
conditions. This happens as this rate depends on the slip
frequency during power swing and is much slower
than the fault case. Generally, the relay takes hundreds of
milliseconds before approaching the relaying zones during
power swing. Thus, the time delay is one of the indices for
discriminating fault from power swing and that has to be set
Rahul Dubey is with Department of Electrical Engineering, National
Institute of Technology, Rourkela-769008, India
rahul.dubey2011@gmail.com).
S.R.Samantaray is with School of Electrical Sciences, Indian Institute of
Technology, Bhubaneswar-751 013, India (email: sbh_samant@yahoo.co.in)
B. Chitti Babu is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, National
Institute of Technology, Rourkela-769008, India
bcbabunitrkl@gmail.com).
Muhammad Ehtesham is with Department of Electrical Engineering,
National Institute of Technology, Rourkela-769008, India (email:
mdehtesham87@gmail.com).
Ashok Tripathy is with Department of Electrical Engineering, Silicon
Institute of Technology, Bhubaneswar-751024, India
tripathy_1948@sify.com).
978-1-4673-0455-9/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE
with knowledge of the likely speed of movement of the
impedance during the. Power swing. However, with this
setting, the relay fails to block if the apparent impedance
moves fast during power swing. Moreover, the relay may not
respond to genuine faults. Occurring during the power
swing period since it is blocked from operation [4, 5].
This will inevitably delay the operation of relay when a fault
occurs during the power swings. Therefore, fault detection
during power swing is an important and critical issue for the
distance relays [6].
For a fault occurring during the power swing, the distance
relay should be able to detect the fault and operate correctly.
The power swing center voltage (SCV), defined as the voltage
at the location of a two-source equivalent system where the
voltage value is zero and the angles between the two sources
are 1800 apart, is used to distinguish faults from power swing
[7].However, it is difficult to set the threshold, especially
when a fault arc is considered. It is easy to detect the
unsymmetrical fault and unblock the distance relay during
power swing with the negative and zero sequence
components, which do not exist during stable power swing [3]
.Some symmetrical fault detectors, are based on the
superimposed components or the rate of change of measured
impedance [8].
These detectors are fast, but cannot operate sensitively for
those faults that cause very small superimposed components,
such as those faults that occur at the power swing center when
the power angle is close to 180°.Thus, the issue becomes more
challenging in case of symmetrical faults during power
swing, because both, power swing and symmetrical
faults are balanced phenomena, resulting blocking of the relay
for faults during power swing.
Distinguishing faults from power swing by monitoring the
voltage phase angle at the relay location [9, 10], has been
found during suitable. However, only the single-phase faults
have been simulated and the method has not been applied to
symmetrical and other unsymmetrical faults. Research
on building intelligent schemes for blocking power swings
using adaptive, neuro-fuzzy inference systems
(ANFIS) [11] has been reported. However, neuro-fuzzy
(email:
systems require huge numbers of training patterns in
achieving a reliable relay function. Moreover, it might need
re-training for use in different power systems.
Advanced signal processing technique such as Wavelet
(email:
transform [12,13] is an effective tool for power system
transient analysis and feature extraction The Wavelet
transform is a time-frequency transform, retaining the time
information of the frequency spectrum, an added advantage
over Fourier Transform and basically a series of band pass
(email: filters. However, in achieving a good location in time, it loses
frequency location and provides such information in
frequency bands [14, 15]. Thus it has become a potential tool 2.1 Discrete Wavelet Transform
for fault detection during power swing as the frequency of the The base functions are generated discretely to avoid redundant
system varies over a range around the nominal frequency m m
during power swings and a fault gives rise to transients. Information by selecting a = a 0 and b = nb0 a 0 [21]. Thus,
The proposed technique uses current signal samples and discrete wavelet transform (DWT) is defined as
process it though Wavelet Transform (db-4) and find out the
detailed coefficients at different level. Using the detailed −m
∗ ⎛ t − n2 ⎞
m
coefficients, the Wavelet Energy is calculated. Further, the DWT (m, n) = 2 2
∑∑ x ( n ) Ψ ⎜
⎜ 2 m ⎟⎟ (2)
out-of-step blocking function is defined for final decision m n ⎝ ⎠
making process which is used for distinguish symmetrical Where, the discretized mother wavelet is
fault from power swing. This paper is organized as
follows. In Section II, symmetrical fault (LLL) detection
1 ⎛ t − nb0 a0m ⎞
methodology is analyzed. The proposed wavelet energy Ψm ,n (t ) = Ψ⎜⎜ m
⎟⎟ (3)
functions for fault detection in presence of power swing are m a
a0 ⎝ 0 ⎠
described in Section III. Section IV describes modeling and
the simulation results. Section V reveals the general a0 ,b0 Are fixed constant with a0 > 1, b0 > 1 m, n € Z where
conclusions followed by the references. Z is set of integers.
20
In discrete case, to analyze the signal at different scales filters
10 of different cut-off frequencies are used. Signal is passed
through a series of high-pass filter (HPF) and low-pass filter
Pinst(p.u)

0
(LPF) to analyze the high frequency and low frequency
-10
components respectively.
-20
B. Multiresolution Analysis (MRA)
-30
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 MRA allows the signal to decompose into various levels of
time(second)
Fig. 1 Instantaneous power (per unit) during power swing resolution. Course resolution level contains approximate
10 Information about low frequency components and retains the
0
main features of original signal. Detailed information
about the high frequency components are retained
Pmean(p.u)

-10
from the level with finer resolution [20] this is an effective
-20
method in which a signal is decomposed into scales with
different frequency and time resolutions and can be
-30
0 0.5 1 1.5
time(second)
2 2.5 3
implemented by using only two filters, one HPF and
Fig. 2 Mean power (per unit) during power swing Another LPF. Then the results are down sampled by a factor
of two and same two filters are applied to the output of LPF
II. DETECTION METHODOLOGY from the previous stage. From the mother wavelet,
Wavelet Theory is the mathematics, which deals with non- the HPF derived and measures the details in a particular
stationary signals, using a set of components that look like input. On the other hand, the LPF delivers a smooth
small waves, called wavelets. It provides multiple resolutions version of the input signal and this filter is derived
in both time and frequency. It is a linear transformation like from the mother wavelet scaling function.
the Fourier transform with one important difference: it allows
Time localization of a given signal with different frequency d1 d2 d7
components.
A. Continuous Wavelet Transform g(n) g(n) g(n)
Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT) of a signal x x(n)
(t) is defined as

−∞ h(n) h(n) h(n)

1 ∗⎛ t − b ⎞
20 kHz
CWT (a, b) =
∞
∫ x(t ) ∗ a
∗Ψ ⎜
⎝ a ⎠
⎟dt (1)
10 kHz 5 kHz 0.156 kHz
Where ψ (t) is the base function or mother wavelet, ‘*’ Fig. 3. MRA using Wavelet Transform
denotes a complex conjugate and a, b Є R, are the
translation parameters, respectively. R is the real
number system. [20]
 A sampling rate of 20 kHz is selected in this study. are many known solutions available for implementing the
Daubechies wavelet db4 is used as the mother wavelet since it antialiasing filters; hence, no further discussion is given.
has given good performance for power system transient
analysis [18], [19]. Based on the sampling rate, the Table-I
current/voltage signal can be fully decomposed into seven Wavelet level and their corresponding frequency bands for a sampling
rate of 20 kHz
levels as shown in Table I [16], [17]. It is expected that the
transient energy will be captured in levels d1–d4 and the
energy in level d7 will track the variations of current with Wavelet Frequency Center
frequency around the nominal frequency. WT will decompose Level Band Frequency
the signal into 7 levels d1–d7 as shown in Table I, each level (Hz) (Hz)
having detail coefficients. The total energy “D” in each level d1 5000-10000 7500
“d” can be calculated using the Frobenius norm as d2 2500-5000 3750
N d3 1250-2500 1875
D= ∑[d (i)]
i =1
2
(4) d4
d5
625-1250
312.5-625
937.5
468.75
The total energy of levels of interest—D7 for the current d6 156.25-312.5 234.375
signal and D1 through D4 for the voltage signal are calculated d7 78.125-156.25 117.1875
and tracked. The reason for selecting the voltage signal to
track the energy of transients is because faults give rise to
more transients in the voltage than in the currents. Start

A Line-1 C
300KM
Current signal at relaying point
(Phase- A current)

S
Relay B ∞
Processing through wavelet
Transform
Line-2 Fault

Fig. 4 System studied for power swing classification.

Compute the energy of the signals
Ed6

III. PROPOSED WAVELET ENERGY FUNCTION FOR FAULT

DETECTION IN PRESENCE OF POWER SWING

The diagram of the proposed symmetrical fault

detection method based on the energy function technique
and wavelet transform is conceptually shown in Fig. 3 Ed6 > threshold??
A. Data Acquisition
The proposed symmetrical fault detection in presence of
power swing requires data acquisition for all three phase
currents. Those data can be obtained directly from No
measurement units of advanced digital relays. Most wavelet
transform based methods require high frequency sampling Yes
rate. The detection method proposed in this paper can be used
in a wide range of sampling rates. Considering advanced
digital relays using sampling rate of 10 kHz, the Fault detected Power swing

same sampling rate is selected in this study, which can satisfy

the requirements of the wavelet transform proposed in this
scheme with good results. In order to avoid aliasing due to the
fault transients and low sampling rate, an analog antialiasing
filter needs to be employed before the sampling of the input
waveforms coming from instrument transformers. There
Fig. 5 flow chart for the proposed energy function for fault detection in
presence of power swing
B. Wavelet Transform
The samples are fed to the relay at a reduced rate of 10 kHz,
because higher sampling rate is not required for normal relay
functions. The samples of the three-phase current of any one and current signals of power swing (a-b-c fault at 80 km from
phase(say IA) are processed with WT. Using (1), the indices the line, fault resistance RF=10Ω, δ = 45 0 ).
D1,D2,D3,D4,D5,D6 and D7 are formed for current(IA).
1
C. Wavelet Energy

d1
0
After processing through WT. We get indices D1 to -1
D7 and cross ponding that we get Ed1 to Ed7 i.e. shown in 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
Table-III. Clearly.
2
D. symmetrical Fault Detection (LLL-G) 0

d2
After calculating the energy(Ed) for each indices then -2
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
Comparing Ed6 with Eth (power swing) so fault is detected.
(Ed6>Eth) 5
0

d3
IV. SIMULATION RESULT -5
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
The studied power system is developed using MATLAB time(second)
(SIMULINK) software package, is shown in Fig.2. The
complete power system includes parallel transmission lines Fig. 8. D1 to D3 fault during power swing
(distributed model) of 300 km each (AB and BC are 150 km
each) and connected to the source (600 MVA) and 5
infinite bus, respectively, at both ends. The relaying
0

d4
point ‘R’, where voltage and current signal samples (per unit)
are retrieved, is as is shown in Fig.2. The operating voltage -5
and frequency of the transmission system are 400kV and the 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
5
sampling rate is 20 kHz on 60 Hz base frequency (333
samples per cycle). The system details are given in the d5
0
Appendix-I.
-5
2 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
5
1.5
0
d6

1
-5
v o lta g e (p .u )

0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3

0.5
time(second)
0 Fig. 9. D4 to D6 fault during power swing
-0.5

-1
50
c u r r e n t ( p .u )

-1.5
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
time(second)
Fig. 6. Phase-A voltage waveforms during power swing. 0

-50
20 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
10
5
c u r r e n t(p .u )

0
d5

-10

-20
-5
-30
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
0 0.5 1 1.5
time(second)
2 2.5 3
time(second)
Fig. 7. Phase- current waveforms during power swing
Fig. 10. Phase-A current and D5 LLL-fault during power swing
Initially, a three-phase fault is created on line-2 and after 15
cycles (0.25 sec) the fault is cleared by opening the respective
circuit breakers at both end of line-2. This sends
the power system into power swing. Fig 4 shows the voltage
 APPENDIX-I
Table –II
Energy of the signals for different wavelet level d1 to d7 The parameter of the system used for simulation (Fig.2) is as
(delta=450, LLL-faults) given below.
Equivalent Generator G: 600 MVA, 22 kV, 60 Hz,
Energy of the Without faults With faults inertia constant 4.4 MW/MVA.
signals Transformer: 600 MVA, 22/400 kV, 60 Hz, Δ Υ
Ed1 0 0 Transmission lines Parameter:-
Ed2 0.0001 0.001 Zero sequence impedance: ZL0 =96.45 + j 335.26 ohms
Ed3 0.0007 0.0159 Positive sequence impedance: ZL1 =9.78 + j 110.23 ohms
Ed4 0.0018 0.0243 Source impedance: Z S = 6 + j 28.5 ohms
Ed5 0.0341 0.1033 Source voltages: E S = 400∠δ kV
Ed6 0.4036 0.8584 Where δ = load angle in degrees.
Ed7 6.4198 9.0941
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