Switchgear and Industrial Protection

6th Semester, Electrical Engg

Module:4
Protective Relays
Unit:1

By Dr. L. C. Saikia
Associate Professor
Electrical Engineering Department
NIT Silchar
Unit:1: Introduction to Protective relays, Trip circuit, Basic requirements of PRs, Types of Protection

At the end of this Lecture the students will be able

to
Know what are causes of faults
What is protective relays?
How the trip circuit operate?
What are basic requirements of a relaying
system?
 What are the types of Protection and how these
works?
 I] Introduction to Protective relays:
The equipments of the power systems are designed to work
under specified normal conditions. However, a short
circuit(SC) may occur due to failure of the insulation caused
by
1. Overvoltage due to switching
2. Overvoltage due to direct and indirect lightning strokes
3. Bridging of conductors by birds
4. Breakdown (B/D) of insulation due to decrease its dielectric
strength
5. Mechanical damage to the equipments
The SC current may cause heavy damage to the equipments
and would also intolerable interruption of services to the
consumers.
Protective relays (PRs) are the devices that detect
abnormal conditions in the electrical circuits by
constantly measuring the electrical quantities which
are different under normal and faulty conditions.

The basic electrical quantities which may change during

faulty conditions are voltage, current, phase angle
(Direction) and frequency.

Having detected the fault the relay operates to

complete the trip circuit which results in the opening of
the circuit breaker (CB) and therefore disconnect the
faulty circuit.
II] Trip circuit:
A typical relay circuit is shown in
the Fig.1 . The connections are
divided into three main circuits.
The first circuit is the primary
winding of the current
transformer (CT) which is
connected in series with the
main circuit to be protected.
The second circuit consist of the
secondary of the CT and the
relay operating winding.
The third circuit is the tripping
circuit which may be either AC or
DC
III] Basic requirement of PRs
A well designed and efficient relaying should have following basic requirements

 Speed: PRs should disconnect a faulty element as quickly as possible.

 Selectivity: It is the ability of the PRs systems to determine the point at which
the fault occurs and selects the nearest CB tripping of which lead to clearing of
fault with minimum or no damage to the system.
 Sensitivity: It is the capability of the relaying to operate under actual
conditions that produce the least operating tendency. It is desirable to have
the protection as sensitive as possible in order that it shall operate for low
values of actuating quantity.
 Reliability: Reliability mean PRs must be ready to function reliable and in
operation at all the times under any kind of faults and abnormal conditions.
 Simplicity: PRs should be simple. As a rule, simple the protection scheme and
lesser numbers of relays, circuits and contact it contains, greater will be the
reliability.
 Economy: The cost of the PRs systems should be such that it is economical.
There should be compromise between reliability and cost.
IV] Types of Protection
There are two types of protection. They are (i) Primary
protection (ii) Backup protection
 Primary Protection: It is the first line of defence and it clears
the faults in the protected section as fast as possible. It is
known that there no equipment in the relaying circuit are
100% reliable. i.e relays and its circuits, CTs, PTs, CBs cannot
be guaranteed.

 Backup protection: Since 100% guarantee may not be obtain

from the components of PRs schemes, hence some form of
back up protection must be provided. This back up protection
operate if the primary relays are fails and cover not only the
local section but the next section also and have a time delay
long enough for the primary relays to operate if they can.
IV] Types of Protection (Cont:)

Fig.2 shows a simple time graded relaying system.

 When a fault occurs at the point as shown, it would be first seen by the Relay
R1 and isolated by CB at C.
 In the event of failure of the relay or associate equipment at C, the fault
would be isolated by operating the relay R2 and CB at B. Hence relay R2 is
the backup relay of R1.
 Similarly R3 is the backup relay of R2. The operating time versus fault current
is also shown in Fig.2 (b). It is seen that there is delay in time for operation of
the relay.