Power System Protection (PSP)

Week-01
Introductory Concepts
Instructor: Dr. Wahab Ali
 Lecture Layout for First Week

1. Faults and abnormal operating conditions

2. Shunt Faults (Short Circuits)their causes and effects
3. Power System Structural Consideration
Multi-LAYER of Power System
Neutral-grounding of Power System
4. Classification of Shunt Faults
5. Grounding or Earthing
6. System Grounding

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 Lecture Layout for First Week

7. Methods of Neutral Grounding

 Solid Grounding
 Resistance & Reactance Grounding
8. Abnormal Operating Conditions
9. Series Faults
10. Classification of Shunt Faults
11. Evolution of Power Systems
12. Protection System and its Attributes
13. System Transducers

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 Background
Electrical power system has three principle divisions
1. Generating station
2. Transmission system
3. Distribution system

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 Why Electrical transients/over-voltages in power system happens

 External Overvoltage
1. Lightning phenomenon
2. Lightning strike to transmission lines
3. Lightning strike to substations

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 Internal Overvoltage
 Switching Overvoltage (due to short circuit incidents, rejection of no-
load lines…)
 Insulation Failure
 Arcing ground, resonance

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 Dependence of modern society on Electric Supply

1. The modern society has come to depend heavily upon continuous

high quality and reliable availability of electricity.
2. Electricity disruption make the life miserable.
3. Zero failure power system can’t be designed.
4. But failures can be minimized, quality and reliability can be improved.
5. Damages and losses (financial and equipment) can be minimized by
properly designed and protected power system
6. What is more important is to prevent the faults and how to mitigate
the consequences of the faults.
7. The ill effects of faults are minimized by quickly isolating the faulty
element from the rest of the healthy system; thus limiting the
disturbance footprint to as small an area in time and space as
possible.

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Construction of a Power system : Primary system

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 Secondary systems in a Power system

 Protection
 Auto control for voltage, frequency, reactive power compensation, power
flow, network configuration and stability
 Metering for Billings, operational control and statistical data
 Local manual control (plant status, voltage level reactive power support,
network configuration)
 Remote manual control via communications links (SCADA)
 Plant condition monitoring and alarming (temperature,
malfunction, maintenance need, operating duty)
 Communications infrastructure
 Instrument Transformers - current and voltage transformer

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What is Protection System

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 Purpose of Protection System

 Protect the public

 Improve system stability
 Minimize damage to equipment
 Protect against overloads
 Employ relay techs and Engineers

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Basic Type of Protection

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Relay Protection System

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 Different Types of Protection

1. By Object
 Line protection
 Feeder protection
 Transformer protection
 Generator protection
 Bus bar protection
 Motor protection

2. By Principle
• Distance protection
• Impedance protection
• Differential protection
• Pilot wire protection
• Over current protection
• Residual current protection
• Directional earth fault
• Over/under frequency protection & Over/under voltage protection 16
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 Single line-to-ground fault due to
flashover of insulating string
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 Faults and Abnormal Operating Conditions (Shunt Faults)

 Shunt Faults (Short Circuits):

When the path of the load current is cut short because of the breakdown of
insulation.
There could be many reasons. Faults due to flashover of spark gap across the
string insulator on a transmission line many times temporary.
If the arc path is allowed to deionize, by interrupting electric supply for sufficient
period, most of the times fault goes away by itself at reclosure.

 Reclosure: It is the process of interruption followed by intentional re-

energization.

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 In low voltage systems up to three reclosures are attempted after which the
breaker is locked out. Multiple reclosure attempts sometimes helps to
burnout the object causing short circuit. The reclosure may be done
automatically.
 In EHV systems, where the damage due to short circuit may be very large
and the system stability is at stake; only one reclosure is allowed.
 Type of Short Circuit:
 Dead Short Cct.: A fault which bypasses the entire load current through
itself is called a metallic fault (dead short). It presents a very low, practically
zero fault resistance.
 Partial Short Cct.: It can be modeled as non-zero resistance (or impedance)
in parallel with the intended path of current. Most of the times it is the
resistance of the arc which is highly non-linear.

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Faults and Abnormal Operating Conditions (Shunt Faults)

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Causes of Shunt Fault

The insulation may fail because of its own weakening, or it may fail due to
over voltage (internal due to switching or external due to lightening). There
may be the following reasons of insulation failure;
 Ageing
 Temperature
 Rain, hail, snow
 Chemical pollution
 Foreign objects
 Other causes

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Effects of Shunt Fault

The steady fault current is not of much concern for isolated alternators. But
in the Interconnected power system all the generators will contribute
towards the fault current, thus building up the value to couple of tens of time
the normal full load current. If these fault current persist even for a short
time, they will cause extensive damage to the equipment that carry these
currents. In general they cause;
 Overheating and danger of fire
 Deterioration/weakening of insulation
 Mechanical damage due to excessive mechanical forces during over
currents (specially in transformers windings).
 Effects the system stability and may trip the alternators due to
increased relative swing caused by increased rotor angle δ.
 Thus in an interconnected system, faults need to be isolated as
selectively and as speedily as possible.

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 Classification of Shunt Fault

Phase Faults and Ground Faults

1. Phase Faults: Faults that involve two or more phases, with or without
ground.
2. Ground Faults: Which involve only one of the phase conductor and
ground.
3. Probability of Occurrence of Faults:

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 Probability of Occurrence of Faults on Different Elements of Power
System

 Severity of the Fault:

Severity of the fault can be expressed in terms of the magnitude of the fault
current and hence its potential for causing damage. In the power system, the
three-phase fault is the most severe whereas the single line-to-ground fault is
the least severe

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 Power System Structural Considerations

1. Multilayered Structure of Power Systems

2. Neutral Grounding of Power Systems
 Multilayered Structure of Power Systems

1. Power Apparatus
Main function is to generate, transforms and distribute power to load
2. Control Equipment
Load center Functions and Central Functions
 It helps to maintain the P/S at normal V & F, it generates
sufficient power as per demand & maintain economy &
security in the interconnected network.
 Control Function: this act continuously to adjust system
variables. (V & F, Power flow)

3. protection Equipment
 This act as a open-closed CBs, due to this the structure of
P/S changes.
 Response time = High (as compare to Control Ftn)
 What is Grounding or Earthing

The process of connecting the metallic frame of electrical

equipment or some electrical part of the system (e.g. neutral point in
a star- connected system) to earth (i.e. soil) is called grounding or
earthling.

Earthing should be connected to:

1.Motor Body
2.Transformer Tank, support structures
3.Towers, Poles and Sheaths of cables.
What do you mean by System Grounding
 The process of connecting some electrical part of the power system
(e.g. neutral point of a star-connected system, one conductor of the
secondary of a transformer etc.) to earth (i.e. soil) is called system
grounding.
To understand the importance of system grounding, lets illustrate it
pictorially

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 The primary winding of a distribution transformer connected between
the line and neutral of a 11 kV line.
 There is capacitance C1 between primary and secondary and
capacitance C2 between secondary and ground.
 This capacitance coupling can produce a high voltage between the
secondary lines and the ground.
 If a person touches either one of the secondary wires, the resulting
capacitive current IC flowing through the body could be dangerous
even in case of small transformers.
 The secondary conductors are ungrounded.
 Let us now turn to a more serious situation.
 Suppose that the high voltage line (11 kV in this case) touches the 230 V
conductor as shown in previous slide.
 Under these circumstances, a very high voltage is imposed between the
secondary conductors & ground.
• If one of the secondary lines is grounded as shown in Fig.
(ii), the accidental contact between a 11 kV conductor and
a 230 V conductor produces a dead short.
• The short-circuit current (i.e. fault current) follows the
dotted path shown in Figure (ii).
• This large current will blow the fuse on the 11 kV side, thus
disconnecting the transformer and secondary distribution
system from the 11 kV line.
What are the Methods of Neutral Grounding

 The methods commonly used for grounding the neutral point of

a 3-phase system are :

1. Solid or Effective grounding

2. Resistance grounding
3. Reactance grounding
4. Peterson-coil grounding (At MS Level)

 The choice of the method of grounding depends upon many

factors including the size of the system, system voltage and
the scheme of protection to be used.
 Solid Grounding
 When the neutral point of a 3-phase system (e.g. 3- phase
generator,3-phase transformer etc.) is directly connected to
earth (i.e. soil) through a wire of negligible resistance and
reactance, it is called solid grounding or effective
grounding.

 The Figure shows the solid grounding

of the neutral point. Since the neutral
point is directly connected to earth
through a wire, the neutral point is
held at earth potential under all
conditions.

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 Solid Grounding

 Solid grounding is usually employed where the circuit impedance is sufficiently

high so as to keep the earth fault current within safe limits.
 This system of grounding is used for voltages up to 33 kV with total power
capacity not exceeding 5000 kVA.
 Advantages of Solid Grounding

 The neutral is effectively held at earth potential.

 When there is an earth fault on any phase of the system, the phase
to earth voltage of the faulty phase becomes zero.
 However, the phase to earth voltages of the remaining two healthy
phases remain at normal phase voltage because the potential of the
neutral is fixed at earth potential.
 This permits to insulate the equipment for phase voltage.
 Therefore, there is a saving in the cost of equipment.
 Disadvantages of Solid Grounding

 Since most of the faults on an overhead system are phase to earth

faults, the system has to bear a large number of severe shocks. This
causes the system to become unstable.
 The solid grounding results in heavy earth fault currents. Since the
fault has to be cleared by the circuit breakers, the heavy earth fault
currents may cause the burning of circuit breaker contacts.
 The increased earth fault current results in greater interference in the
neighboring communication lines.
 Resistance Grounding

 In order to limit the magnitude of earth fault

current, it is a common practice to connect
the neutral point of a 3-phase system to
earth through a resistor. This is called
resistance grounding.

 When the neutral point of a 3-phase system

(e.g. 3-phase generator, 3-phase transformer
etc.) is connected to earth (i.e. soil) through a
resistor, it is called resistance grounding.
 Resistance Grounding
 Figure shows the grounding of neutral point through a resistor R.
 The value of R should neither be very low nor very high.
 If the value of earthling resistance R is very low, the earth faulty
current will be large and the system becomes similar to the solid
grounding system.
 On the other hand, if the earthling resistance R is very high, the
system conditions become similar to ungrounded System
 The value of R is so chosen such that the earth fault current is
limited to safe value but still sufficient to permit the operation of
earth fault protection system.

 In practice, that value of R is selected that limits the earth fault

current to 2 times the normal full load current of the earthed
generator or transformer.
 Resistance Grounding

 Suppose earth fault occurs in phase B as shown in Fig. The

capacitive currents IR and IY flow in the healthy phases R and
Y respectively.
 The fault current IF lags behind the phase voltage of the
faulted phase by a certain angle depending upon the earthing
resistance R.
 Resistance Grounding

 The fault current IF can be resolved into two components viz

1. IF1 in phase with the faulty phase voltage.
2. IF2 lagging behind the faulty phase voltage by 90°.
 The lagging component IF2 is in phase opposition to the total
capacitive current IC.
 If the value of earthling resistance R is so adjusted that IF2 = IC, the
arcing ground is completely eliminated and the operation of the
system becomes that of solidly grounded system.
 However, if R is so adjusted that IF2 < IC, the operation of the
system becomes that of ungrounded neutral system.
 Advantages of Resistance Grounding

 The following are the advantages of resistance earthing:

 By adjusting the value of R, the arcing grounds can be
minimized.
 The earth fault current is small due to the presence of
earthling resistance.
 Therefore, interference with communication circuits is
reduced.
 It improves the stability of the system.
Disadvantages of Resistance Grounding

 The following are the disadvantages of resistance

grounding:

 Since the system neutral is displaced during earth

faults, the equipment has to be insulated for higher
voltages.
 This system is costlier than the solidly grounded
system.
 A large amount of energy is produced in the earthing
resistance during earth faults.
 Sometimes it becomes difficult to dissipate this
energy to atmosphere.
 Resistance Grounding

• It is used on a system operating at voltages between 2.2 kV and 33 kV

with power source capacity more than 5000 kVA.
 Reactance Grounding

 In this system, a reactance is inserted between the neutral and ground as

shown in Figure.
 The purpose of reactance is to limit the earth fault current. By changing
the earthling reactance, the earth fault current can to changed to obtain the
conditions similar to that of solid grounding.
 Disadvantages of Reactance Grounding

 This method is not used these days because of the

following disadvantages:

 In this system, the fault current required to operate the

protective device is higher than that of resistance grounding
for the same fault conditions.

 High transient voltages appear under fault conditions

End