8.

Philosophy of protection settings

The objectives of the protection system are to:
– limit damage to people and to the plant;
– permit different service conditions;
– guarantee maximum service continuity for the plant not affected by faults;
– activate the automatisms provided.
The peculiar characteristics of the protection system of an electric network are:
– dependence: it can be called on to work after either a short or long period after installation. In any case, it must work when
it is called on to operate;
– safety: it must not operate when is not required (it must not operate during transients). It must allow the various service
conditions and activate the automatisms provided;
– selectivity: it must operate only and when necessary, guaranteeing maximum service continuity with minimum
disconnection of the network;
– speed: represented by the minimum fault time and by damage to the machinery;
– simplicity: measured by the number of pieces of equipment needed to protect the network;
– economy: assessed as the cost of the protection system in relation to the cost of malfunctioning.
The protection system is the ensemble of the instrument transformers and the relays with adequate settings. The relay is only one
of the components making up the protection system.
Selection of the type of function and of the functions required to adequately protect a machine or a plant must be made on the
basis of:
– Standards;
– interface with the external network;
– acceptable risk (consequences of the fault);
– short-circuit currents (maximum and minimum);
– status of the neutral;
– presence of self-production in plant;
– coordination with the existing system;
– configurations and network running criteria;
– practices.
The aim is to achieve the best technical-economic compromise which allows adequate protection against “faults” with
“significant” probability and to verify that the investment is commensurate with the importance of the plant.
The electric protections are of different types and have different applications:
– zone protections (e.g. differential or with impedance);
– machine protections (e.g. reverse power);
– selective protections (e.g. overcurrent);
– non-selective protections (e.g. undervoltage, frequency);
– protections in support (e.g. fuses, overcurrent, undervoltage);
– interface protections (e.g. undervoltage protections; under/over and rate of change of frequency; overcurrent for
disconnection between the plant network and the utility network);
– protections for making automatisms (e.g. synchronism check).
The criterion which is followed when the setting of a protection is calculated is to efficaciously protect the machine or plant and
then look for trip selectivity. Trip selectivity means isolating the smallest area of plant in the case of a fault in the shortest time
possible (selectivity) and then to ensure a reserve (back-up) in the case of failure of the primary protection.
There are various different selectivity criteria which can be used in plants. 25