1.

POWER SYSTEM PROTECTION

Modern Power Systems use different types of relays for the protection of
the total power system during faults, the modern relay which is used for the
protection of power systems are the microprocessor relays.

The power equipments which are used in a Power station are very costly
and hence to protect these equipments from the faults generated within them i.e.
the ground faults we need an earth fault relay. An earth fault relay detects the
ground fault or earth fault where the phase is shorted to the earth or ground; it
monitors the amount of earth current and accordingly follows the characteristics
which are defined to it and trips the circuit.

Earth Fault current is dependent on type of grounding used for the system.
If we consider a case of grounding the neutral terminal of the generator with
negligible impedance i.e. solid grounding of the neutral high current flows across
the neutral above 100A when an earth fault occurs in the generator. Similarly if
we consider the case of high impedance grounding the earth fault current will be
in the limits of 2A-15A. The high impedance can be a distribution transformer
connected across the neutral where the other point is grounded or it may be the
ground fault neutralizers, i.e. resonant grounding.

In selecting an earth fault relay the grounding of the system is considered.

For e.g. if the grounding is solid grounding then a fast acting relay i.e. the speed of
the relay has to be very fast in detecting and tripping of the circuit, if the
grounding is high impedance grounding then the sensitivity of the relay has to be
increased to detect the earth fault in the system.
 In this project an earth fault relay for a transformer is discussed. To detect
high resistance ground faults in transformers a percentage differential relay has a
certain minimum value of pick-up for internal faults. Faults with fault current
below this value are not detected by the percentage differential relay. Winding to
core faults which are of single phase to ground type involving high resistance fall
in this category. Therefore we must have a more sensitive relaying scheme to
cater for high resistance ground faults.

Further the reach of such a protection must be restricted to the winding of

the transformer otherwise it may operate for any ground fault anywhere in the
system beyond the transformer. Hence such protection is known as restricted
earth fault protection. If there is a fault on the star side then the currents flow in
the lines connected to the delta side in such a way that there is no spill current
through the relay on the CT secondary side, thus the reach is automatically
restricted to the delta side.

Figure 1 Earth fault protection for the delta side of delta-star transformer.
Since this is a current balance scheme it is independent of the load current and
hence can be made as sensitive as desired.

Fig shows the restricted earth fault protection whose reach is limited to the
star side of the transformer. Ground faults beyond the star side CT’s anywhere in
the system do cause current to flow on the secondary of the CT’s. However the
currents circulate through the CT in the neutral path and the CT in faulted phase.
Thus no spill current flows and the scheme remains stable on external faults. The
operation of the scheme for internal faults, restricted to the star side can be
easily verified.

Figure 1.4 Earth fault protection for the star side of delta-star transformer.
2 Relay Interface Unit

As shown in Fig.3 the relay interface unit is the input/output unit of the
system. Each relay requires one input port and one output port. A 1-out-of-8
decoder (74ALS138) is used to generate four input pulses and four output pulses,
which are enough to implement four relays. The input pulses are referred to as
ICPl (input current pulse 1) through ICP4. On the other hand, the output pulses
are called TCBl (trip circuit breaker 1) through TCB4. In Fig. 3, the measuring unit 1
measures the current I1 and sends an analog signal to the A/D unit. The digital
output of the A/D unit is connected to the data bus through an input port 1. The
microprocessor reads the current by generating the signal, say ICP1, which
enables input port 1. When the conditions for tripping circuit breaker 1 are met,
the microprocessor generates the output pulse TCB 1, which triggers the circuit
breaker.

Figure 2.3.2 Relay interface unit

2.4 Principle of operation

 The four-relay system described in Section 2 is a real-time multitasking
system [3]. It has four tasks, where each over current relay program is one task.
All four tasks run on one microprocessor: the 8085. These tasks cannot be
executed sequentially (one complete task at a time) because each task is a never-
ending program. Each relay constantly monitors a current value. An alternative to
sequential execution is to allow the four tasks to equally share the time of the
8085 microprocessor, which is the essence of the introduced four-relay system.
The 8085 microprocessor executes part of the first task followed by part of the
second task and so on. After executing part of the fourth task, the microprocessor
resumes the partial execution of the first task. This way, if one relay detects a
fault, the microprocessor will not abandon the other relays. The success of the
system depends on including the execution time of the other partial tasks in the
time delay of each relay.

Operation of one relay:

For each over current relay the microprocessor implements the appropriate
time delay by a combination of counter and a look-up table in the memory. The
look up table contains the time-current characteristics of the relay. The counter
which is updated frequently by the microprocessor, measures the duration of
fault current. Based on the information contained in the look up table and the
latest value of the counter, the microprocessor decides when to trip the circuit
breaker.

The time-current relationship of an over current relay can be approximated

as In *t= constant. In general the time current relationship of the ith over current
relay is described as,
T=G(i) for Ij> Fi………(1)

When the current is below a predetermined fault level F i the circuit breaker
should not trip. The counter count i starts as soon as Ii exceeds Fi. It continues to
count as long as the fault remains. The value n i on the counter outputs is
proportional to the time that is t=k(ni)…….(2)

where k is a constant. Substituting (1) in (2)

ni = -G(Ii) k …(3)

Equation (3) is the foundation of the look-up table of relay

1. Under fault conditions, the input current I i is used as an offset to jump into the
look-up table to read n. If latest value of counter counti is greater than ni; , the
microprocessor generates the pulse TCBi .

Operation of Four Relays:

The four-relay system is a time-sharing system. As shown in Fig. the

microprocessor executes, in turns, parts of the programs of the individual relays.
The parts executed from each relay program are similar except that each relay has
its own counter and input/output ports. In the partial program, the
microprocessor performs the following actions before exiting to the next relay
program:
 Figure 2. (a) Tasks of the system (b) Service routine of relay 1

1) Read the current. If the current is below fault level, clear the counter, and exit
to the next relay program.

2) Increment the present count by one. If the updated value of the counter is
below Ni, exit to the next relay program.

3) Trip the circuit breaker, and exit to the next relay program.

If the first relay detects a fault, the counter count1 starts counting.
According to Fig. 4(b), after each increment of the counter countl, the other three
relays are checked for faults. Now, if the third relay detects a fault, count 3 starts
to count as well. The system maintains count on both counters count1 and
counts. Whenever the count exceeds nl for count1 (n3 for count3), the signal TCBl
(mis) generated. Furthermore, the system can handle faults in all four relays in a
similar way. There are four counters in the system. The relationship between time
t and the count value ni on each counter can be described by (2), that is t = k(ni).
Since the microprocessor checks the other three relays between the increments
of each counter, the constant k in (2) must include the execution time of the
other three partial programs. The precise value of k is equal to the time interval
between two successive measurements of the same current I i. The value of k is,
therefore, equal to the execution time of all the instructions in the sampling
interval of the current Ii. Each instruction in the 8085 instruction set consists of a
certain number of states [2]. Each state time is equivalent to one cycle of the
internal frequency, which is equal to half the crystal frequency. The crystal
frequency is 6.14 MHz; that gives a state time equivalent to 325.5 ns.

For example, the instruction XCHG (exchange Hand L with D and E) consists
of four states and takes 1302 ns to execute on the described system. The way the
partial program of one relay is shown in Fig. 4(b) leads to variable values for k
because it contains two conditional-branch instructions. The execution time of
the partial program depends on the outcomes of the two conditions. However, k
is made constant by inserting the appropriate number of NOP (no operation)
instructions to balance all the branches of the routine. The NOP instruction is a
one-state instruction and does not change the state of the microprocessor. For
the four-relay system, the value of k turned out to be 0.153 x l0^-3 s. Since the
partial programs of the four relays are identical, the value of k is proportional to
the number of relays R in the system, in general

k = (38.409 x 10^-6)R s.
More relays can easily be added to the presented system because the hardware
design as well as the software design are very flexible. It must be pointed out that
the memory requirement is far below the 64K addressable memory space of the
8085 microprocessor.