Condition-based Maintenance: A Forward Step on the Power

System Protection Maintenance at the Portuguese Transmission

System Operator
H Leite*, B Soares*, S Costa †

* University of Porto-Faculty of Engineering, Portugal, hleite@fe.up.pt and ee08236@fe.up.pt

†ELEX-ES – REN, Portugal, susana.costa@ren.pt

Based on the protection system condition (named Key

Keywords: Protective Relays, Condition Based Maintenance, Performance Indicators (KPI)), it is assessed the protection
Key Performance Indicators, Disturbance Records. system assets to predict its risk of failure in real-time.

Abstract 1.1 The ¶V Protection system Maintenance Policy at the

This paper demonstrates an advanced model which integrates
both corrective and condition-based maintenance in the
Portuguese Transmission System Operator (TSO) protection
system. It also identifies the relevance of protection system
condition indices for the maintenance decision-making
process. The developed model analyses data from every fault
event till a three level back-up system and decides which type
of maintenance to apply. A detailed example of this decision-
making model is illustrated in this paper.
Portuguese TSO
Every power equipment at the network is being monitored and
protected by two different and competing protection systems.
This protection systems usually comprises current and voltage
transformers, protective relays, batteries, circuit breakers and
communications channels.
Figure 1 illustrates the protection system redundancy.

1 Introduction

Power protection system has the duty to protect personnel and

equipment as well as to limit damage in the case of electrical
faults. Whenever necessary, protection system needs to operate
correctly and in a highly reliable manner regardless of being
idle for months or years. To achieve a high level of reliability,
effort in maintaining equipment over its lifecycle is needed.
Different maintenance policies can be applied. There have
been various classifications of maintenance policies and they
can be categorised into reactive (or corrective) maintenance, Figure 1 Schematic of the protection V\VWHP¶ redundancy
adaptive maintenance, preventive maintenance and condition-
With this redundancy in mind, the Operation and Maintenance
based maintenance (CBM).
Division is comfortable applying corrective or adaptive
maintenance to the protection systems instead of any other
Due to the fact that Portuguese TSO has a redundancy over
maintenance scheme e.g. Time Based Maintenance. However,
each protection system (i.e. each primary equipment is
at the moment, all the protection systems components are
protected by two different and competing protection systems
monitored and analysed after a network failure. It is the way to
with different voltage and current transducers, protective
know if any corrective maintenance action is required. This
relays and protective algorithms, different relays source supply
reactive maintenance can be realized either locally or remotely.
and also different circuit breakers trip coils), the maintenance
policy so far is mainly reactive. However, aiming to seek
Independently of the protection system worked correctly, there
higher reliability, the Portuguese TSO is committed to apply
is always a health check of the primary and backup protection
condition-based maintenance policy to its protection system.
system. In the Portuguese Transmission Network between 300
Thus, the Portuguese TSO intends to prioritise and optimise
and 400 incidents take place in average each year; most of them
maintenance resources based on the real-time data. This work
due to external causes such as forest fires, storms, pollutions,
advances a model which integrates both corrective and
birds or lighting.
condition-based maintenance to the protection system.

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2 Network Failure: Seeking for a Protection 3 ³&HQWUDO Application of Disturbance
System Automatic Analysis $QDO\VLV´ : The Decision-making Model
Protection systems fail if: (i) primary protection (i.e.,
protection whose tripping is necessary to eliminate the fault) The application analyses data after a network failure event in a
does not work properly; (ii) fault eliminated by backup three level of back-up system and decides which type of
protection; (iii) the fault elimination time is greater than a maintenance to apply. The application is therefore a decision-
maximum value allowed; (iv) protection tripped in untimely making model as shown in Figure 2. The type of maintenance
way; (v) fast autorecloser GRHVQ¶W work properly; (vi) circuit devised is either corrective, adaptive or condition-based
breaker GRHVQ¶W work properly. From all these functional maintenance and is based on the component KPI¶V as
failures, it is possible to determinate failure modes. previously mentioned.
Considering numerical protections, failure modes are: (i)
failure in alimentation system; (ii) problems in protection
HTXLSPHQW¶V algorithm; (iii) mechanical contacts of
protectLRQ¶V exit signals jam; (iv) analogic-digital converter
and input cards with problems; (v) problems in input/output
cards of digital signals; (vi) problems in memory or other
electronic parts of protection equipment; (vii) problems in
GHYLFHV¶ timers; (viii) incorrect parameters/settings; (ix)
protection DOJRULWKP¶V bugs; (x) problems in windings of &7¶V
and 97¶V (xi) problems in current EUHDNHUV¶ tripping coils. All
these failure modes must be observed when defining a
maintenance strategy to power systems relaying.

The rationale behind the development of the ³&HQWUDO

Application of Disturbance $QDO\VLV´ is to acquire and analyse
every network failure automatically and to decide which type
of maintenance should be applied. Thus, this application takes
over all the systematic tasks, update all protection system
condition indices and generates maintenance alarms in real-
time. These protection system components condition indices
(named Key Performed Indicators, KPIs) could be intrinsic to
that particular protection system component or common to that
protection system component family.

Figure 2 ³Central Application of disturbance Analysis´

2.1 Key Performance Indicators .3,¶V Specific &
Common
Two sets of Key Performance Indicators are derived to help
indicating the condition of every protection system component
health. These two sets are divided in those who belong only to
that particular component and those that may be common to
that component family (i.e. make and model)
The Key Performance Indicators are essential to automatically
and in real-time analysed the protection primary and back
system´s components condition and therefore help the ³FHQWUDO
Application of disturbance Analysis ³ to decide where there
will be a maintenance action or not, if so, which type of
maintenance action should be more appropriate to that
component. The .3,¶V are also divided into classes depending
on which protection system component is being assessed.
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flowchart
The Condition Based Module combines two sub modules, i.e.
the ³&RQGLtion Monitoring 0RGXOH´ and ³Decision-making
Module´. The condition monitoring module task is to
calculate, to update the KPI¶s and store all indicators values in
the database. The decision-making module task is to determine
the equipment¶s alarm level in terms of maintenance. The
alarm level can be: (0) ± no alarm; (I) ± Maintenance action
should be taken; (II) ± Maintenance action is required;
Additionally to the alarm level issued to the operator, a report
with the critical KPI¶s values is created and sent to the operator
as well. If a maintenance action is required and taken, the KPI¶s
will be updated accordingly.
4 A Working Example
In order to demonstrate how the importance of network
disturbance is identified, and Key Performance Indicators
.3,¶V) specifics and commons are determined in the
maintenance action decision-making, a working example is
used in the following.
An incident happens between the 400kV substation SFF and
PCRJ and the overhead line was tripped off.
Figure 3 the 400kV network with the indication of the incident
between substations PCRJ and SFF
The analysis of the incident starts with reading the
chronological event from both substations. The chronological
event must be with the synchronized time. The oscillography
will be read and carefully analysed.
Figure 4 the oscillography obtained from both substations
Figure 5 Time of the events occurred with the active protective
functions
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From the chronological event and oscillography it is possible
to make the following decisions: i) whether or not the fault is
in the trip zone ii) which phase(s) are faulted. iii) which
protective function(s) are responsible to open the circuit
breaker iv) whether or not teleprotection works v) if the backup
in adjacent substation sees the incident and have the same
perception about the type of fault and which protective
functions are activated vi) whether there is a single pole
tripping and/or reclosing, and so on.
From the oscillography synchronized time it is necessary to
find its location in order to make necessary repairs and restore
power as soon as possible. An accurate fault location on the
line is an important requirement both for a permanent fault and
for a transient fault that may point to a weak spot.
Figure 6 graph locating the fault
As the fault distance from both substations was found and as
the distance relay was active, it is important to plot the
trajectory of the pre-fault, fault and post-fault on the R-X plane
from both distance relays.
R-X plane explains sets of relays for protection of each line.
Each relays provides characteristic for each zone. It is possible
to find if the relay will see the fault as beyond its characteristic
and will not operate even though it should have operated, this
is called ³XQGHUUHDFK´ or instead ³RYHUUHDFK´ i.e., to operate
for a larger value of impedance than that for which it is adjusted
to operate under steady-state conditions.
Figure 6 The R-X diagram from both ends of the overhead line.
Now all this goes to the ³&RQGLWLRQ Monitoring 0RGXOH´
which in turn is going to update all the ³.H\ Performance
,QGLFDWRUV´ specific and/or common.
The Key Performance Indicators Specific to the failure are
advanced and determined. Particular to the IED itself
(temperature, humidity, operating times, number of years after
last maintenance), operating time, non selective trip, operating
time excessive, correct operating time, incorrect operating
time, number of time failure to pickup, failure to operator due
to saturation of the current transformer; failure due to the
secondary circuit of the protection system, .3,¶V could also be
related to the incident itself as: protective relay operation time,
time of the protective relay pick-up; number of relay pick-up
well-succeed, number of single pole reclosing, circuit breaker
opening time, etc.
The .3,¶V common to a family of protection system
components might be: watchdog failures, mean time between
failures, non selective failures by IED model and software
version, number of operating time excessive, number of time
failure to pickup, etc.
Final Remarks
With the work presented, one can conclude that KPIs allows
engineers to know when and where there are problems in
protection power systems. It was presented the Condition
Based and Corrective maintenance application. Also, with this
implementation, an operating equipment historic (individual
and by model) is built. This allows future implementation of
reliability and risk based maintenance. Without relevant
reliability data, this model seems to be the most adequate to be
implemented in Portuguese TSO.
For future development, economic viability about PRGHO¶V
implementation in Portuguese TSO can be examined and the
goal of Decision Taking Module development can be further
investigated.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the Operation and Maintenance
Division from the Portuguese Transmission System Operator,
Redes Energéticas Nacionais, REN for the collaborative work.
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