Protection Philosophy

Akhil Kumar Gupta

Faculty Member

03/05/2011
Role of Protection
 Elements Of Electrical System
• Primary system
– Generator and Excitation system
– Generator Transformer
– Auxiliary system
– HT/LT switchgear 11/6.6kV,415V
– EHV switchyard 132 kV and above
– Transmission line
– Distribution system
– Electrical Load such as motors, lighting etc.
• Secondary system
– Control and monitoring
– Protection
– Metering
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 Role of Protection
• Role of Protection is to provide isolation of a problem
area in the electrical system quickly, so that the shock
to the rest of the system is minimized and as much as
possible is left intact
• Protection does not imply that it can prevent trouble,
such as faults or equipment failures (can not anticipate
trouble)
• Exceptions are Buchholz Relay and surge arrestors
• Protection does not mean prevention, but rather
minimizing the duration of the trouble and limiting the
damage, outage time, and related problems that may
otherwise result

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 Requirements Of Electrical System
• Basic requirements of protective system are
– Reliability
– Selectivity
– Sensitivity
– Speed of operation
– Simplicity
– Economics
• Reliability The probability that a protection can
perform a required function under given conditions for
a given time interval
– It has two aspects - Dependability and Security

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 Requirements Of Electrical System
• Dependability - The degree of certainty that a relay or
relay system will operate correctly
– Ability to function correctly at the time of requirement
• Security – Relates to the degree of certainty that a
relay or relay system will not operate incorrectly
– Ability to avoid unnecessary operation during normal day-
after-day operation and faults outside the designated zone
of operation
• Protection must be secure (not operate on tolerable transients),
yet dependable (operate on intolerable transients and
permanent faults)
• Enhancing Security tends to decrease the Dependability, and
vice-versa
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 Requirements Of Electrical System
• Selectivity maximum continuity of service with minimum
system disconnection i.e. quality of a protective relay by which
it is able to discriminate between a fault in the protected
section and the normal condition, and also, it should be able to
distinguish whether fault lies within its zone of protection or
outside the zone (also called as discrimination)
• Relay should also be able to discriminate between a fault and
transient conditions like power surges or inrush of a
transformer’s magnetizing current
• Protective system should not wait indefinitely it the protective
scheme of the zone in which fault has occurred fails to operate
and After a preset delay the relay should operate to trip the
circuit breaker

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 Requirements Of Electrical System

• Fault at F1 lies in a closed zone, and will cause circuit breakers

B1 and B2 to trip. The fault at F2, being inside the overlap
between the zones of protection of the transmission line and
the bus, will cause circuit breakers B1, B2, B3 and B4 to trip,
although opening B3 and B4 is unnecessary
• Fault at F3 lies in two open zones, and the fault should cause
circuit breaker B6 to trip, B5 is the backup breaker for this fault,
and will trip if for some reason B6 fails to clear the fault
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 Requirements Of Electrical System
• Absolute Discrimination (Unit System)
– Able to detect and respond to an abnormal
conditions occurring only with the zone or the
element they are specifically intended to protect
• Dependent or Relative Discrimination (Non-
Unit System)
– Dependent on the correlated or coordinated
response of a number of similar systems, all of
which respond to a given abnormal condition

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 Requirements Of Electrical System
• Sensitivity is the ability of the system to detect the
threshold value of an abnormal condition to initiate
protective action
• Speed - to disconnect as quick as possible i.e. before
development of any other type of fault and
consequent minimum equipment damage & improved
system stability
• Simplicity - minimum protective equipment and
associated circuitry (as a rule, less number of relays in
the scheme and the less the number of contacts, it is
more reliable)
• Economy - maximum protection at minimal total cost

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Primary and Backup
Protection
 Zones of Protection
• There is separate protective scheme for each element
of the electrical system
• A protective zone covers one or at the most two
elements of a electrical system in such a way that the
entire system is collectively covered, and thus, no part
of the system is left unprotected
• Adjacent protective zones must overlap each other,
failing which a fault on the boundary of the zone may
not lie in any of the zones and hence no circuit breaker
would trip, thus, the overlapping between the
adjacent zones is unavoidable
• If a fault occurs in the overlapping zone, more circuit
breakers than the minimum necessary to isolate the
faulty element of the system would trip

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 Zones of Protection

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 Primary and Backup Protection
• There is a suitable protective scheme for each zone. If a fault
occurs in a particular zone, it is the duty of the primary relays of
that zone to isolate the faulty element
• The primary relay is the first line of defence, if due to any
reason, the primary relay fails to operate, there is a back-up
protection scheme to clear the fault as a second line of defence
• Relays have an assigned area known as primary protection
zone, also may provide backup protection for the area outside
their primary zone known as backup zone

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 Primary and Backup Protection
• The back-up relays made independent of those factors
which might cause primary relays to fail
• A back-up relay operates after a time delay to give the
primary relay sufficient time to operate
• When a back-up relay operates, a larger part of the
power system is disconnected from the power source,
but this is unavoidable
• As far as possible, a back-up relay should be placed at
different station, sometimes, a local back-up is also
used. It should be located in such a way that it does
not employ components ( PT, CT, measuring unit, etc.)
common with the primary relays
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 Backup Protection
Three types of back-up relays
– Remote back-up
– Relay back-up
– Breaker back-up
• Remote Back-up
– Back-up relays located at a neighboring station, and they
back-up the entire primary protective scheme which
includes the relay, circuit breaker, PT, CT and other elements,
in case of a failure of the primary protective scheme
– It is the cheapest and the simplest form the back-up
protection and is a widely used for transmission lines
– It is most desirable because of the fact that it will not fail due
to the factors causing the failure of the primary protection.
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 Backup Protection
• Relay Back-up
– This is a kind of local back-up in which an additional relay is
provided for back-up protection
– It trips the same circuit breaker if the primary relay fails and
this operation takes place without delay
– Though such a back-up is costly, it can be recommended
where a remote back-up is not possible
– For back-up relays, principles of operation that are different
from those of the primary protection are desirable, and
they should be supplied from separate current and potential
transformers

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 Backup Protection
• Breaker Back-up
– This is also a kind of a local back-up
– This back-up is necessary for a bus bar system where a
number of circuit breakers are connected to it
– When a protective relay operates in response to a fault but
the circuit breaker fails to trip, the fault is treated as a bus-
bar fault, in such a situation, it becomes necessary that all
other circuit breakers on that bus bar should trip
– After a time-delay, the main relay closed the contact of a
back-up relay which trips all other circuit breakers on the bus
if the primary relay does not trip within a specified time
after its trip coil is energized

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 Backup Protection

• Consider the fault at location F inside the zone of protection of

transmission line AB. Primary relays R1 and R5 will clear this
fault by acting through breakers B1 and B5. At station B, a
duplicate primary relay R2 may be installed to trip the breaker
B1 to cover the possibility that the relay R1 may fail to trip. R2
will operate in the same time as R1 and may use the same or
different elements of the protection chain. The local backup
relay R3 designed to operate at a slower speed than R1 and R2
and probably set to see more of the system.
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 Backup Protection

• It will first attempt to trip breaker B1 and then its breaker

failure relay will trip breakers B5, B6, B7 and B8. This is local
backup relaying, known as breaker-failure protection, for circuit
breaker B1. Relays R9, R10 and R4 constitute the remote backup
protection for the primary protection R1. These will be slower
than R1, R2 or R3; and also remove lines BC, BD and BE – from
service, which would also de-energize any loads connected to
these lines. A similar set of backup relays is used for the system
behind station A.
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 CT Location
• Bus Bar protection trips all bus breakers for Fault at “F”.
Continued infeeds from remote end would trigger LBB, which in
turn, can trip remote C.B. through Signalling Channel

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 Redundant Protection System

• Redundant system costs more but can give big savings in the
primary system due to short fault clearance time
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 Requirements Of Electrical System
• Duplication of Protection is usually done at UHV Level or for
Equipments of Large Ratings
• Duplicated Protections when provided use separate CT/VT/DC
Inputs, so as to avoid common cause of failure

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Protective Schemes
 Protective Schemes
• Most common protective schemes are
– Over current system.
– Distance Protection
– Carrier-Current Protection
– Differential Protection
• Over current Protection
– This scheme of protection is used for the protection
of distribution lines, large motors, equipment, etc.
and includes one or more over-current relays
– An over-current relay operates when the current
exceeds its pick-up value
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 Protective Schemes
• Distance Protection
– Distance protection used for the protection of
transmission or sub-transmission lines
– Distance relay measures the distance between the
relay location and the point of fault in terms of
impedance, reactance, etc.
– The relay operates if the point of fault lies within
the protected section of the line
– There are various kinds of distance relays, such as,
impedance, reactance and mho type

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 Protective Schemes
• Carrier Current Protection
– This protection is used for the protection of EHV and UHV
lines
– A carrier signal in the range of 50-500 kHz is generated
– A transmitter and receiver are installed at each end of a
transmission line to be protected
– Information regarding the fault is transmitted from one end
of the line section to the other
– Depending on the information, relays placed at each end trip
if the fault lies within their protected section
– Relays do not trip in case of external faults
– The relays are generally of distance type and their tripping
operation is controlled by the carrier signal
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 Protective Schemes
• Differential Protection
– This protection is used for the protection of generators,
transformers, motors of very large size, bus zones, etc.
– CTs placed on both sides of each winding of machine and
outputs of their secondaries are applied to the relays coils
– The relay compares the current entering and leaving the
machine winding
– Under normal conditions or during any external fault, the
current entering is equal to the current leaving the winding,
but in the cases of an internal fault, these are not equal
– This difference in the current actuates the relay
– Thus, the relay operates for internal faults and remains
inoperative under normal conditions or during external
faults
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 Protective Schemes
• UHV System
– Duplicated High Speed Protection (Main1 / Main2) for
Transmission lines. Similar duplicated protections are used
for Large Generators, Inter connecting transformers with
conventional time graded O/C backup protection.
• EHV / HV System
– Main & Backup Protection. Main Protection is High speed,
selective while Backup is conventional time graded O/C
protection.
• MV System
– Time graded O/C protection
• LT System
– MCCBs / ACBs with Thermo-magnetic releases/Static Trip
device with S.C./ O.L. Protection
– HRC Fuses/ MCBs / ELCBs at tail end
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