EE613:Transient in Electrical power systems & insulation Fall 2019

Name: Almohannad Khalil Althagafi ID: 2000517

Essay#1: Transient behavior and Types

Introduction:
This essay provides information about transient behavior and types. In this
essay firsrt the definition of transient will be mentioned then some challenges
that face engineers when dealing with transient. Then types of transient will be
mentioned accordinly to different criteria of deciding the types.then some
famous solution will be mentioned

Work:
What is Transient: Transient is sudden change in the voltages and current in
the power system due to sudden changes in the system such as switching of
heavy loads, failures, power outages, lightning strikes… etc, which may cause
sudden bursts of energy injected into the power lines.
This cause Extremely high voltages that delivers huge amount of current into
the circuit in the matter of micro seconds to milli seconds.

Transients generated within the premises are best diverted by SPDs located
close to the internal source of the transients or close to the electronic load
equipment if this is not possible. Best results are obtained if both locations are
protected.

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one of the biggest challenges with transient is sometime is hard to trace the
source of the issue because of the suddently in its behavior for example SEC
have transient issue in one of the long distance transmission lines and they
couldn't trace the exact origin of the issue, later they discovered that it’s caused
by the wind moving the cables wich may make inter-phase disturbance they
solve the issue by putting inter-phase spacers.

There is few ways to characterize the types of transient:

According the origin of the transient.
According to the speed of the phenomenon.

According to the origin we can divide transient into two categories

1. External Sources.
Lightning is the most well-known of the externally generated transients.
Most lightning transients are not actually the result of direct lightning
strikes. They are most often "induced" onto conductors as lightning
strikes near the power line. The large electric fields generated during a
discharge can couple into the power system, creating induced transients.

Other external cause of transient is wind as mentioned earlier in the SEC

issue.
Also humidity is another reason that may increase the transient rate like
in Abha because of high humidity due to passing clouds transient surges
happens after and the only solution is to replace the isolation for the
13.8KV lines into 66KV grade isolation.

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2.Internal Sources.
In general the vast majority of transients are cased because of elements
withing the system, The main reasons are device switching, resonance
and arcing.

a. Device Switching.
When switching operation is done in power system with or without load,
the voltage produced as a result of this is called the switching surge.

b. Resonance.
• When the inductive reactance of the line becomes equal to its
capacitive reactance the net impedance of the line becomes the
minimum and it is equal to the resistance of the line.
• Series resonance occurs at this time.
• If the distortion occurs in the waveform of the e. m. f. the harmonics
arproduced. So the value of Xu and Xc may become equal at the fifth
or multiple harmonics and may result in resonance.
• Over voltages are produced due to the resonance.

c. Arching.
When neutral is not earthed in three-phase line and if line to ground fault
occurs, the phenomenon of arcing ground occurs. Due to this,
oscillations of three to four times the normal magnitude are produced.

According to Speed of the transient overvoltage

• Temporary overvoltage.

Temporary overvoltage is transient that happen in the maximum

duration of 1 minute. There is a lot of causes for this type of transient
for example.

i. Fault overvoltages: Phase-to-ground faults produce power frequency,

phase-to-ground overvoltages on the unfaulted phases. The
overvoltage magnitude depends on the system grounding and on the
fault location.

ii. Load rejection overvoltages: they are caused by rejecting load from
the system it self.

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 iii. Resonance overvoltages: these happens from the interactive of
capacitive components in the systems like between lines and shunt
capacitors and also inductive components like transformers and shunt
reactors. Its caused by sudden change in the system configuration.

iv. Transformer energization: These can occur when a line and an

unloaded or lightly loaded transformer are energized together.

v. Electromagnetic induction.
vi. Oper conductors.

• Slow overvoltage.
Slow overvoltages usually caused mainly by switching operations.
They may occur in the duration of 20-5000 us and might go up to
20ms. The most frequent causes are.

i. Line energization and re-closing overvoltage: A three-phase

energization or re-closing of a line/cable may produce switching
overvoltages on all three phases.
ii. Fault overvoltages.
iii. Load rejection overvoltages.
iv. Inductive and capacitive current switching overvoltages:

• Fast overvoltage.
They are generally produced by lightning discharges, although
switching of nearby equipment may also produce fast-front wave
shapes. Their time to peak value may vary between 0.1 and 20 μs.
Fast-front lightning overvoltages can be caused by strokes to phase
conductors, strokes to line shield wires which flash over to phase
conductors, or by nearby strokes to ground. Induced voltages by nearby
strokes are generally below 400 KV and are important only for lower
voltage systems. Either cause will generate surge voltages that impinge
on the substation equipment, those surges caused by the back flash
being more severe than those caused by shielding failures. As these
surges travel from the stroke terminating point to the station, corona
decreases both the front steepness and the crest magnitude.

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 • Ultra fast overvoltage.
Ulatra fast overvoltages are transients that are so fast they happen in
frequency range of the power system of 100kHz to 50MHz with time
period under 0.1uS. Causes of tjese are faultes within gas insulated
substations and switching of motors and transformers.

Some Solutions for transient.

There is solution for this issue in the name of transient suppressors. There is
multiple types of suppresors for example zener diod,these are desighned in way
that if voltage is raising above the limit the resistance between the lines would
decrease to minimal level wich help to decrease voltage spikes.

Another method that is being used is that of magnetic relays. These are being
employed in the cases of distribution systems and provide blockage against
transients. There is generation of noise in this case though.

Also one very important way to avoid transient is high quality insulation
insulation is very important due to transient are mostly caused due to inteaction
between the lines and outer enviroment or between each phase.