4/28/22, 12:17 PM Protection Relay Settings ensuring effective coordination and familiarization with ABB relays | World of Electrical

lectrical Engineering.

Protection Relay Settings ensuring effective

coordination and familiarization with ABB relays
Introduction

Protection relay settings in power system plays a very vital role for safe operation of power system ensuring minimal outage to end
user thereby contributing to less loss in terms of financial matters to utility as well. In other words, protective relay in any
components of power system are backbone of system, the failure or maloperation may lead to undesired or nuisance tripping
causing failure of equipment’s at local end as well as remote end effecting large number of consumers.

Modern day power system operates as a whole thus effective coordination between relays at local and remote end ensures power
system reliability, quality, stability ensuring healthy operation of power system which is beneficial to both utility and consumers.
The non-effective coordination may lead the fault to migrate from effected to non-effected zone thereby collapsing the entire power
system. The all relays in power system has their own actuating quantity on the basis of which desired protection objectives is
fulfilled, but it must be made sure that any part of the system must not be left unprotected.

In this blog, I will basically be dealing with settings of earth fault and overcurrent relay which is one of the most happening faults in
power system connected with end user, the earth fault being the most severe one. Also, the coordination example will be illustrated
for earth fault and over current protection since beside this in other protection coordination sequence is often less required.

Parameters for Relay Setting

O/C and E/F relays are those relays that respond to current only. The relay will operate if the current passing through the operating
coil are higher than the threshold current. The threshold current is the set current below which the relays must not operate and
above which they should operate. Basically, overcurrent relay is a type of protective relay which operates when the load current
exceeds a preset value whereas earthfault relay operates having current threshold of 10-20% of load current. Depending upon the
time of operations relays may be classified as:

Standard Inverse Definite Time Relay

These are relay whose operating time is approximately inversely proportional to fault current near pick up value and becomes
substantially constant slightly above the pick-up value of the relay.

Extremely Inverse Relay

This relays are used for the protection of transformer, cables and feeders because it is possible to achieve accurate discrimination
with fuses and auto re-closures in their case.

Very Inverse Relay

The time current characteristic is inverse over a greater range and after saturation tends to definite time. This type of relays are
employed in feeders and long sub transmission lines.

Settings of O/C and E/F relay

The relay setting for overcurrent and earth fault protection requires parameters such as load current (often assumed) depending
upon the load consumption data recorded on log sheet during peak time which is to be supplied by particular feeder. The CT ratio in
which the primary feeds the load and secondary feeds the relay. The required overcurrent and earth fault threshold, which is to be
adopted according to utility standard of requirement. I have adopted 110% and 10% threshold for O/C and E/F settings. I have tried
to show the simplest technique for protective relay setting, there are other techniques where fault current is employed which shall be
shown in next blog.

Step 1: Assume Load Current (IL)

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Step 2: Gather CT ratio (for ex: 200/1A, 400/1A, 800/1A etc.)

Step 3: Assume threshold for O/C and E/F protection

Step 4: Calculate Fault Current

For ex: If %Z of largest transformer connected at local end is 11%, then for fault current at 33kV voltage level is = IL/%Z = 4771.63 A
(if transformer size is 30 MVA).

Step 5: Calculate Relay Plug Setting Multiplier

PSM = Fault Current/Actual Pickup

For Ex: If load current is assumed as 500A, then overload current = 500 x 1.1 = 550A.

Plug Setting for O/C = 550/800 = 0.68

Step 6: Calculating operating time of relay. Since normal or standard inverse time relay is adopted here, the time-delay is calculated
from formula given above.

Relay Co-ordination

The basic of parameter calculation is same as explained above but the objective of coordination shall be such that fault at any place
must be cleared by substation near it and should not migrate upstream or downstream. The correct application and setting of relays
require a knowledge of the fault current at each part of the power system network. The following data are required for finding out
the setting of the relay.

1. A single line diagram of the power system.

2.The impedance of the transformers, feeders, in ohm or in PU.

3.The maximum peak load current in feeder and full load current of transformer.

4. Maximum and minimum short circuit current that are expected to flow.

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5.Type and rating of the protective devices and transformer.

The time interval of operation between two adjacent relays depends upon a number of factors;

 The fault current interrupting time of the circuit breaker.

 The overshoot time of the relay

 Variation in measuring devices errors.

 Factors of safety.

In above figure, relay co-ordination is achieved when fault F1 is cleared by relay R1 and also operating sequence of relay shall be in
following manner: R4>R3>R2>R1.

Writing Setting Parameters to Relay

In this blog, setting the calculated parameters to relay has been shown. For this purpose, ABB relay has been adopted having model
no: REF 615. This blog will only be informative and the detail explanation shall be explained in another blog for setting distance
relays of line or transformer differential protection. The settings parameters to relay could be feed directly into relays manually with
the help of buttons or by employing computer. Feeding parameters manually may be complex and tedious sometimes when large
number of data are to be feeded, for ex: line protection, transformer protection. ABB requires PCM600 software to enable computer
to access relays. In this blog, I will be only showing the step regarding setting of overcurrent relays.

Step 1: Gather LAN cable and Open PCM 600 software, connect one end to relay and another to your PC port.

Step 2: In order to connect relays optically, you must have connectivity package for that relay which is available freely. For ex: I
must have REF 615 relay connectivity package in order to write into that relay.

Step 3: Create new project and make it according to your substation maintaining it in hierarchical order from higher voltage at top
to lower at bottom.

Step 4: Add no. of feeders in each voltage level as it is required. For ex: I am concerned with one 33kV line Feeder. I will go to 33kV
voltage level and add relays added to that feeder as shown in below figure.

Step 5:  After addition of relays, go to application configuration, then to protection, then to settings and then to your desired
protection as shown below:

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