Power System Protection Studies and Relay

Coordination
CASE STUDY : Protection Co-ordination Study
In any power system netowrk, protection should be designed such that protective
relays isolate the faulted portion of the network at the earliest, to prevent equipment
damage, injury to operators and to ensure minimum system disruption enabling
continuity of service to healthy portion of the network.
When relays meant to protect specific equipments, transmission/distribution
lines/feeders or primary zone protective relays, do not operate and clear the fault in
their primary protection zone, backup relays located in the backup zone, must operate
to isolate the fault, after providing sufficient time discrimination for the operation of
the primary zone relays.
The protective relays must also be able to discriminate between faulted conditions,
normal operating conditions and abnormal operating conditions and function only
for the specific protection for which they are designed, without operating for any
normal and short term acceptable abnormal events for which they are not intended to
act and provide protection.
The term or phrase relay coordination therefore covers the concept of discrimination,
Selectivity and backup protection as explained in the foregoing discussion. Further the
coordination is not confined only to relays and equipment operating characteristics,
but also includes other protective device characteristics such as Fuse, MCB's, Circuit
Breakers as applicable.
Relay coordination calculation module must consider the operating characteristics of
the relays, normal operating and thermal or mechanical withstand characteristics of
the equipments and must determine the optimum relay settings to achieve the
objectives stated to protect the equipments and to ensure continuity of power supply
to healthy part of network.
Apart from the fault or short circuit conditions, protection system must also be
designed to provide protection against thermal-withstand limits, motor stalling,
negative sequence current with-stand limits, protection against abnormal frequencies,
and protection against unbalance operating conditions as applicable to various
equipments and operating situations.

Frequency relay settings can be determined by using a dynamic simulation tool, such
as transient stability analysis.Frequency Control Engineering ; Transient Stability
Analysis

Overcurrent Phase/Earth Fault Relays

Overcurrent phase fault relays.
Overcurrent earth fault relays.
High set relay settings to ensure protection against primary zone faults.
Coordination with maximum load current.
Coordination with fuse characteristics.
Coordination with maximum motor starting current and time.
Coordination with transformer inrush current.
Coordination with primary-back up pairs.
Coordination with thermal withstand capabilities ([I-square]t = K
characteristics).
Coordination with safe stall limits for Motors.
Automatic generation of TCCs showing all relevant coordination.
Automatic identification of primary and back up relay pairs.
Provision for user defined back up relays for specific primary relays.
Solution for multiple island networks.
Multiple study cases for different network and source configurations in a single
execution of the program.

 Built in libraries of commercial relays, IEEE and IEC characteristics.

Distance Relay Settings

Zone setting calculations for zone 1 and 2.
Zone 3 setting calculations based on inbuilt short circuit calculations.
Settings for different commercially available relays.
Different relay characteristics MHO , Polygonal , Lens , Circle , R/X Blinder,
Offset characteristic.
R/X diagrams.

 Solution for multiple islanded network in a single execution of the program.

Solution for multiple study cases with different network configurations in a
single execution of program.

Short Circuit Studies, Fault Calculations

Short circuit calculations provide currents and voltages on a power system during
fault conditions. This information is required to design an adequate protective relaying
system and to determine interrupting requirements for circuit breakers at each
switching location. Fault conditions can be balanced or un-balanced shunt faults or
series (open conductor) faults. Often information about contributions to a fault from
rotating machines such synchronous machines, large motors would be required as a
function of time to determine making and breaking requirements. Fault calculations
may consider or ignore pre-fault power flow conditions. Short Circuit is the
PowerApps analysis module dedicated to simulating fault conditions in three-phase
electric power systems. User friendly data entry, a multitude of reports and flexibility
in applying all industry-accepted standards are features that make it an Indispensable

tool for these very common and important system studies. PowerApps Short Circuit
Module adheres to North American ANSI C37.5, ANSI C37.010, ANSI C37.13 and
International IEC-60909 guidelines. It also supports conventional short-circuit studies
without reference to any particular standards.
Short circuit studies provide post fault bus voltages at different busbars in the network
for a fault at any one of the location in the network. These results are typically given
as fault MVAs, fault currents in kA at different bus bars and fault contributions from
adjacent bus sections to the fault, on a single line diagram for various operating
conditions. Short circuit studies for minimum fault level condition at the main switch
board may be of interest in relay coordination to check, whether relays can distinguish
between the maximum load currents and minimum fault currents. In the event, the
minimum fault currents in the relays are very close to the maximum load currents, it
may be necessary to suggest voltage restraint for relays to ensure that the relays will
operate only for fault conditions and not for healthy full load conditions.
The deliverables from the short circuit studies will include the following
-

Tabular report of conventional short circuit levels at all buses

Tabular reports of Making/Breaking Current levels at all the buses

- Report on single line diagrams showing fault levels, fault kA for both
conventional and IEC 60909 type calculations
- Recommendations with respect to operating strategy, to limit short circuit levels
where needed

General Features of Short Circuit Study/Calculation

Software
Fault levels for asymmetrical and symmetrical faults including bolted faults.
ANSI/IEEE standards.
IEC standards including 363 and 909.

 G74 British standard, a computer algorithm based standard for IEC 909
standard. IEC 909 standard specified multiplication factors based on hand
calculation procedures and simplifying assumptions.
Short circuit analysis of multiple-islanded systems with solution for each of the
islands.
Default flat 1.0 pu positive sequence bus voltage based calculations.
Option to consider pre-fault bus voltages from load flow along with the
sequence impedances for loads.
Automatic one line diagram creation.
Multiple case studies in single execution of the program for different network
configurations and/or different source impedances or ratings.
Automatic generation of reports for all the specified study cases on the single
line diagram.
Induction motor models.
Fault calculations for network with multiple islands with sources in each island.
Detailed system wide post fault bus voltages and flows for specified bus faults
along with impedance seen at each relay locations.
Output contains, detailed phase quantities, sequence quantities of voltages,
currents, driving point impedances, transfer impedances, contribution from
sources, and contribution from adjacent buses.
Results of fault calculations with mutual coupling matches perfectly with
published examples.

Transformer Protection
Although transformers are generally provided with both electrical and mechanical
protection schemes, our services are related to the protection against the electrical
disturbances.
The general electrical protection provided to a transformer are related to the following
-

overload protection
protection against short circuits (internal / external)
protection against ground faults
transient over voltages (switching, lightning )

Protection against overload is achieved using overcurrent relays and details of thermal
with stand capability curves of the transformer.
Protection against external short circuit condition is achieved by fuses, overcurrent
relays with are without instantaneous settings. Protection against internal short circuit
is achieved by proper application of differential protection. Suitable differential
protections are needed separately for phase and ground faults.
Protection against over voltages due to switching, lightning, switching of capacitor
banks or other system disturbances is achieved by proper insulation coordination.

Generator Protection
Generator protection requires the consideration of many abnormal conditions that are
not present with other system elements. The abnormal conditions that may occur with
generators include
1. Overheating
2. Stator (due to overload or loss of cooling)
3. Rotor (due to overexcitation, loss of cooling , negative
sequence stator currents)
4. Winding faults
5. Stator (phase and ground faults)
6. Rotor (ground faults and shorted turns)
7. Overspeed and underspeed
8. Overvoltage
9. Loss of excitation
10.Motoring
11. Unbalanced current operation
12.Out of step
13.Subsynchronous oscillations
14.Inadvertent energization
15.Nonsynchronized connection
We generally evaluate the protection settings based on relay
application manuals provided by the relay manufacturers and use
variety of analytical tools and calculations where needed for further

investigations to assess the adequacy of protection and relay

performance.