Bus Protection

Prof. Dr. M. Shahzad

MNS-UET Multan
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
2 Bus Faults
3 Bus Protection Requirements
4 Bus Protection by Backup Line Relays
5 Bus Differential Protection
5.1 Current Transformers for Bus Protection
5.2 Differential Protection Concepts and Problems
5.3 Differential Protection with Overcurrent Relays
5.4 Bus Protection with Percent Differential Relays
5.5 Bus Differential Protection with Linear Couplers
5.6 High-Impedance Bus Differential Protection
6 Other Types of Bus Protection
6.1 Fault Bus Protection
6.2 Combined Bus and Transformer Protection
6.3 Bus Protection Using Auxiliary CTs
6.4 Directional Comparison Bur Protection
6.7 Auxiliary Tripping Relays
6.7.1 Lockout Relays
6.7.2 Non-Lockout Relays
7 Reference

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Introduction

Bus protection is sometimes called "bus-zone

protection," because the bus protection includes all of the
apparatus connected to the bus.

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Bus Faults
• Bus faults have been observed to be relatively rare
compared with line faults.
• Bus faults account for only 6-7% of all faults, whereas
line faults account for over 60%.
• Most of the bus faults are ground faults
• large number of bus faults are caused by human error,
due to leaving safety grounds connected to the bus after
repair or routine maintenance work.
• The largest number of failures, however, are due to
flashovers and insulation failures, which are often
initiated by inclement weather.

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Statistic about Bus Faults

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Bus Protection Requirements
Some engineer recommend dedicated protection due to following
reasons
• Some time dedicated bus protection is not used
• Clearing of bus faults will be performed by the backup protective
zones of the lines terminating at the bus.
• Backup protection for bus is slow and the fault will be allowed to
do more damage to the bus structure and surrounding equipment
than would be the case with fast clearing.
• The bus is usually common to several terminating lines and the
bus outage may result in multiple line outages.
• Slow clearing of faults may endanger person who work in the
station
• This suggests that dedicated, fast bus protection may be
considered necessary, even though bus faults occur infrequently.

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Bus Protection Requirements
Some engineer recommend not dedicated protection due to
following reasons because possibility of bus fault small:
• possibility of tripping the bus unnecessarily,
• thereby causing the outage of connected load
• Possibly creating system stability problems. Such
unnecessary trips, which are often' called "security failures.
• may be due to relay setting error,
• to instrument transformer saturation, or
• to human error in working on the relays or
• the nearby station relay equipment.
• This possibility, coupled with the fact that the frequency of
bus faults is small

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Final Analysis about Bus Protection

Bus fault although rare but likely to be cause:

• Extensive damage
• Extensive outage
• Costly (repair and force outage cost)

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General Requirements for Bus Protection

• Speed (transient Stability Problem)

• Limit the damage
• High voltage buses where high current
• Fast clearing time than backup otherwise no need
• Mostly clearing time is 1 cycle but less is better for
safety of workers.
• Security (freedom from risk)
• Many circuit are connected also depend on bus
configuration
• Should be small section of bus
• Station design and protection

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Bus Differential Protection

Differential protection is by far the most common

method of providing bus protection.
• Problems
• Methods

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Problems Differential Bus Protection
The major problem of bus differential protection are problem in CT and in
differential protection scheme:
• unequal saturation of the current transformers used (various levels)
• Non linear behavior due to presence of iron core.
• Direct current components in fault current
• CT burden different for different equipment
• Series and parallel wire in outgoing circuits

Types of CT used for bus protection

• Bushing Current Transformers.
• Window- Type Current Transformers.
• Wound-Type Current Transformers
• Auxiliary Current Transformers
• Current Transformer Accuracy

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Bus Differential Protection

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Problems Differential Bus Protection

One was in CT and other is in differential protection

scheme: Kirchhoff Laws

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Problems Differential Bus Protection

The primary current two components, a symmetrical

ac component and a dc component. The dc
component starts at a maximum value and decays
exponentially. We can write the total primary current
as follows:

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Simple Arrangement is Shown for Analyzing Previous Problem

• Two lines are connected to bus

• This is equivalent to previous ckt
• All lines that are not saturated
represent by line # 1.
• Faulted line # 2 having saturated CT
• Magnetizing impedance is short circuit CT # 2
• Fault current flow in CT # 1

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Simple Arrangement is Shown for Analyzing Previous Problem

• IF represent fault current

• Relay current will depend upon parallel impedance

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Some Previous Practices and Current Problems for Bus Protection

• During saturated CT, by adding high impedance in relay coil can effectively
control the saturation problem.
• Those relays design with high impedance work well in this situation
• Several lines terminated on protected bus will result of different burden of CTs at
external faults
• Large core saturation for modern network is problem
• In order to avoid saturation effect time delay practice was adopted
• But this solution for modern power system is inadequate
• Another early solution was a form of biased percentage differential protection,
• which also suffered from the need for current transformers with very large cores.
• Because of these difficulties, the current differential form of bus protection is
seldom used.

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Differential Protection with Overcurrent Relays

• Previous was only differential relay

• All problems with CT saturation are still with it
• Can set pickup value high in order to avoid false tripping
• DC component available in fault current is more troublesome aspect
• CT primary current can be express as:

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Typical Values Of Tau For Equipments Are:

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Problem related to value of Tau
• Duration of dc component will depend upon the
equipment connected with line
• For generator case persist for long time rather than
line
• Delay in time dial setting of overcurrent relay is a
good solution but only for line case

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Mason Formula For Maximum Flux Density

Mason gives a formula for estimating the maximum flux density in the
current transformer in terms of the symmetrical components of the CT
primary current is:

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Mason Calculation
• Bmax greater than 1.5 Tesla will cause saturation in CT
• Higher than 1.8 T cause higher saturation in CT
• Old CT will saturate at lower value
• To calculate error characteristic on dc component is
very difficult, particularly if instantaneous relay pickup
is desire
• The effect of saturation can be counteract by using high
resistance
• High resistance can cause overvoltage in relay
• Mason suggests that the resistance added should not be
so high that the CT's cannot supply at least 1.5 times
pickup current under minimum bus fault current
conditions

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Mason Rules for Appling OC relay with Differential Protection

1. Locate the junction point of the CT's at a central point with respect to the
CT locations and use heavy wire in order to hold down the resistance of the
leads.
2. Choose CT ratios so that the maximum magnitude of external fault
current is less than about 20 times the CT rating.
3. Set the relay pickup at least twice the load current of the most heavily
loaded circuit.
4. Use inverse-time overcurrent relays to provide some time delay and
account for the dc component of current

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Bus Protection with Percent Differential Relays

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Bus Protection with Percent Differential Relays
• Using percent differential relays instead of overcurrent relays in
bus differential protection is a great improvement.
• For this type of relay, the problem is one of providing adequate
restraint in the relay to make up for the inadequacy of the CT's as
they tend to saturate with large fault currents.
• One solution is the use of a "multi-restraint" relay that consists of
three groups of restraint units and one operating unit. The restraint
windings are unidirectional, current flowing through the restraint
winding in either direction causes restraint, or flowing through the
operating winding provides closing bias.
• The restraint windings are paired such that one group sees the
difference of line currents and another sees the sum
• In addition to the multiple restraint windings, this relay has a
"variable percentage” characteristic, provided through a saturating
auto transformer, which also provides a shunt for the dc
component, thereby improving the sensitivity of the unit.

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Bus Differential Protection with Linear Couplers

One effective solution to this problem is to eliminate CT

saturation by eliminating the iron from the current transformer.
This is accomplished by a device called a "linear coupler,"
which is an air-cored mutual reactor on a nonmagnetic toroidal
core. The advantages of this device are as follows:
1. Elimination of saturation in current measurements
2. High-speed performance with negligible transient response
3. Very reliable design
4. Easy to set and maintain
5. Can be operated without damage with secondaries open

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Bus Differential Protection with Linear Couplers

• The only disadvantage is that this solution requires

the purchase of all new CT's since all circuits on the
bus must be equipped with linear couplers if they
are to be used at all. This may be costly in cases
where there are already CT's in place.
• The second disadvantage is at external fault the
(voltage differential protection) voltage of all
secondies will add up due to revise direction.

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High Impedance Bus Differential Protection

• High impedance bus differential scheme, which is a

current differential relaying scheme using
overvoltage relays.
• Designed to defeat the problems of CT saturation
• Conventional CT's
• Good example of reaping the benefits of adding
resistance

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• Full-wave bridge rectifier adds substantial resistance to that leg of the
circuit.
• L-C circuit is used to respond on dc component
• The disadvantage of this idea is that it slows the response to a degree, but
this is countered somewhat by the addition of a high-speed overcurrent
relay in series with a voltage-limiting, metal-oxide resistor, which is placed
in the circuit to limit the voltage that is produced when faults occur,
the voltage being quite high because of the high resistance of the bridge
rectifier (about 3000 ohms). Thus, the overcurrent unit provides the
tripping for high-magnitude bus faults, and its minimum pickup can be
conveniently set quite high to permit it to ignore external faults.
• Large number of circuits are connected to the bus
• Assignment EXAMPLE 16.1

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Low Impedance Current Differential

It was pointed out earlier that a low impedance

current differential relay used for bus protection
would need a very high setting or a significant
amount of time delay to prevent misoperation because
of CT saturation. It is possible to use a low
impedance device if steps are taken to overcome the
effects of CT saturation.

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Other Types Of Bus Protection

• Fault Bus Protection

• Combined Bus and Transformer Protection
• Bus Protection Using Auxiliary CT's
• Directional Comparison Bus Protection

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Fault Bus Protection
• Fault bus protection is used in cases where an
insulating bus support structure can be built that is
completely isolated from ground as in the case of
metal-clad switchgear or other stations that can be
completely housed in a metal enclosure.

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Combined Bus and Transformer Protection

• It is employed when a transformer and a bus can

logically be protected as a unit

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Bus Protection Using Auxiliary CT's

Most of the differential bus protection schemes suffer from two types of
problems:
(1) current transformer saturation, and
(2) careful current transformer selection, matching, and design restrictions
on the burden presented to each transformer. Current transformer
saturation is particularly difficult for buses that are near synchronous
generators, because of the high dc component of fault currents
supplied by the generators.
One type of bus differential protection that solves these problems is the
"half-cycle” protection scheme that uses auxiliary current transformers for
proper impedance matching and detects the fault condition before the
current transformers reach saturation.
The designs based on the fact that a conventional CT will deliver current
for about 2.0 ms, even under fault conditions, before saturation occurs. The
half-cycle relay is designed to detect the fault and initiate tripping before
saturation occurs.
Assignment

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Directional Comparison Bus Protection

• Bus protection needs to be added to an existing

station
• Expense of changing all the existing current
transformers is excessive
• Use the existing line CT's for bus fault protection.
This requires directional relays, fault detectors, and
a timer.

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Auxiliary Tripping Relays
In many bus protection on installations, the bus
protection energizes an auxiliary tripping relay, which
has individual tripping contacts for each breaker
connected to the protected bus.
• Lockout Relays
• Non-Lockout Relays

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Lockout Relays
• Lockout relays are often used to prevent a re-
energization of the bus until an inspection can be
performed.
• In some cases, each individual circuit breaker may have
its own separate lockout contacts, even if the breaker is
tripped by the lockout relay tripping contacts.
• Some of these lockout relays are reset manually, but
provision can be made for remote resetting by means of
a motor-driven reset mechanism.
• Other relays use an electric seal-in coil to lock the relay
in the operated position, with resetting being performed
by a push-button switch.
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Non-Lockout Relays
• Some bus protection applications use non-lockout
auxiliary tripping relays. This arrangement permits
automatic re-energization of the bus.
• Some relays automatically reset once the relay coil
is de-energized, or when the fault is cleared in the
case of a bus fault.
• This type of device is appropriate for unattended
stations with open bus work and no remote control
facilities.
• If successful, automatic re-energization of the bus
will reduce the outage time.
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Reference
Chapter 16, P. M. Anderson etc. “Power system
protection”. New York: McGraw-Hill; 2014 Jan.

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