Paper accepted for presentation at 2003 IEEE Bologna Power Tech Conference, June 23th-26th, Bologna, Italy

Improving Relay Reach and Speed Through a Hybrid Algorithm

Vajira Pathirana, Student Member, IEEE, P.G.McLaren, Fellow, IEEE

Abstract A standard distance relay is usually set to operate for a fault within 80% of the length of the line being protected. The paper describes how the reach of such a relay can be increased without an end-to-end communication channel and the zone 2 element of an impedance relay can be utilized to improve fault detection speed. The proposed method is not only reliable, but also capable of detecting faults quickly. An added advantage is the ability of the relay to accurately calculate the distance to the fault from the relay location. The algorithm was tested for different fault conditions through simulations using PSCAD and the results for a few cases are presented in the paper. Index Terms correlation, protective relaying, fault location, impedance measurement, power transmission protection, transient propagation, UHV transmission lines.

I. I NTRODUCTION The standard practice in distance protection is to set the primary reach to about 80% of the line length. A fault on the remaining 20% of the line will fall into zone 2 of the protection scheme. Zone 2 element involves an added delay to allow a primary element to operate rst. For the stability of the electrical network, it is important to clear faults on high voltage transmission lines quickly. The faster the fault is isolated from the rest of the network, the smaller the disturbance inicted on the system. A directional scheme with an end-to-end communication protocol will be a solution for this, but the reliability of such a system will depend on the reliability of the communication channel. The standard method of transmission line fault detection is mainly based on impedance measurement algorithms. The impedance of the transmission line as observed at the relay location is calculated using the measured voltage and current signals. The calculation of line impedance digitally was introduced a few decades ago [1], and since then so many distance protection schemes have been developed incorporating different methodologies of calculating impedance [2]. However, a protection scheme based on impedance measurement might mal-operate for a fault near the reach point [3]. The calculated fault impedance may appear to be within zone 2 for such a fault. A zone 2 fault involves added delay, which could cause unwanted repercussions on the power system stability. One of the major obstacles faced by the relay manufacturers in the past was implementing new protection algorithms in
This work was supported by Manitoba Hydro, Winnipeg, MB, National Science and Engineering Council of Canada and the Ofce of Naval Research, USA. Vajira Pathirana is with University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada, email: vajira@magnet.fsu.edu <mailto:vajira@magnet.fsu.edu> P.G.McLaren is with Center for Advanced Power Systems, Tallahassee,FL, USA., email: mclaren@caps.fsu.edu <mailto:mclaren@caps.fsu.edu> .

real-time with the available technology of the day. The rapid developments of microprocessor technology and real-time signal processing capabilities have enabled implementing relaying techniques which before were considered to be impractical [4]. The fast number-crunching capability of todays signal processors has not only helped implementing new algorithms, but also permitted the integration of several protection schemes in the same relay. Having several protection schemes that operate on different principles in the same relay enhances the backup capability of the full scheme while allowing improvements of one system through the results of another. The recent developments have placed a growing interest in the utilization of fault-generated transients for protection. The fault-generated traveling wave information can be used to identify disturbances on transmission lines, but needs fast signal processing techniques to identify these high frequency transients. The new digital signal processors can serve such high-speed requirements. When a fault occurs, traveling wave fronts appear on the line and those will propagate along the line and reect at any discontinuity. These wave fronts contain valuable information about the fault type, location of the fault and fault inception angle. Since the traveling waves show the rst signs of a possible disturbance on the line, a protection scheme based on fault transients will be able to achieve fast fault detection times. The traveling wave information can be used to locate faults within almost the whole distance of the line except for faults very close to the relay location due to the inadequate frequency resolution of transducers [5]. In the rare occasion when a single phase fault occurs near a voltage zero, the fault generated wavefronts will be small in magnitude and will not carry enough information to detect the fault [6]. The impedance algorithms have fast response times under close-in fault conditions, but may take a full 60Hz cycle to detect a fault towards reach point. The transducers used to acquire traveling wave signals will not face bandwidth problems for faults occurring at the far end of the line. The positive features of the traveling wave algorithm can be used to improve the performance of the impedance relay and vice versa. Combining both these techniques, it is possible to develop a new protection scheme having a reach close to the full length of the line while achieving fast fault detection speeds. The proposed scheme was simulated for different fault conditions on a three-phase 500kV power system using waveforms generated through an electromagnetic transient program. The simulation results show that the combined algorithm improves the relay reach and speed.

0-7803-7967-5/03/$17.00 2003 IEEE

II. O PERATING P RINCIPLE The distance protection scheme based on impedance measurement moves rapidly into the trip zone for close up faults. The need for speeding up is towards the reach point of the relay. The traveling wave relay is capable of quickly detecting faults close to the reach point of the impedance relay as well as faults beyond the reach point extending almost to the full line length. The output from the traveling wave relay can be combined with the impedance relay in two ways. Under the rst option, the trip decision is always made by the traveling wave relay except when the initial wavefronts do not carry enough information to detect a fault condition. This can happen when a single phase to ground fault has a fault inception angle close to zero or the fault is too close to the relay location so that the repeated reections of the wavefronts cannot be detected clearly. The impedance algorithm acts as a backup to the traveling wave relay. Under the second option, the trip decision is always based on the outcome of the impedance relay. The output of the traveling wave relay is utilized to accelerate the zone 2 element of the impedance relay. When the calculated distance of the traveling wave relay shows a fault on the protected line, and the calculated impedance enters zone 2 of the impedance relay, the zone 2 element is accelerated. If the traveling wave relay is unable to detect a fault, the primary element or the zone 2 element of the impedance relay will detect the fault depending on the fault location. Except for such a situation, the hybrid algorithm of traveling wave relay and zone 2 element of the impedance relay operates before the primary or zone 2 element of the impedance relay. Hence the traveling wave relay enables a fast zone 2 element and allows the impedance relay to detect faults quickly on almost the full length of the line. The overall result is a secure and fast protection scheme. The Fig.1 shows a ow chart of the protection algorithm. If the traveling wave relay fails to detect the fault and the fault is in the secondary zone, the zone 2 element will have the standard 400ms delay. For any other fault on the protected line, either hybrid or primary relay is allowed to trip the breaker, whichever detects the fault rst. Primary protection becomes the back-up for the hybrid relay except for close in faults and no travelling wave type faults since zone 2 element will detect the fault before the primary. Zone 2 acts as the starter element for the travelling wave technique and prevents possible mal-operation due to travelling waves coming from switching operations not involving faults. The operation of the relay under option 1 was presented before [7] and will not be discussed here in detail. We will fully investigate how the relay operates according to the second option. The improvement in fault detection time is compared with a protection scheme based on impedance relays connected with an end to end communication channel. The theory behind traveling wave protection is discussed rst. III. T RAVELING WAVE TECHNIQUES Faults which occur on a transmission line at an instant of a non-zero voltage will cause the pre-fault line charge

Start

No

Calculate impedance Forward fault detected by TW relay? Yes Calculate the distance Does impedance fall into primary zone? Yes No

No

Is the fault on protected line? Yes

Does impedance fall into zone 2? Yes

No

Only impedance relay detects the fault? No

Yes Delay 400ms

Trip with the first available fault identification method TRIP

Fig. 1.

Flow chart of the algorithm

to rapidly discharge. This can generate heavy surges which will travel along both directions of the transmission line from the fault point and reect at any discontinuity along the line, including the fault point itself. The repeated reection of these surges or waves produces decaying high frequency voltage and current transients. In an extra high voltage (EHV) transmission line, where the line length and the system capacitance are large, these transients become signicant, specially with small resistance in the faulted network. A. Wave equations The fault initiates forward f2 and backward f1 traveling waves, which propagate with a constant amplitude at a velocity slightly less than the speed of light. The voltage v and current i signals measured at any location and time are given by, v(x, t) = f1 (x + ut) + f2 (x ut) i(x, t) =
1 Z

where Z is the surge impedance of the line and u is the surge velocity of the signals. The traveling wave functions can be derived from above as, v Z.i = 2.f1 = S1 v + Z.i = 2.f2 = S2 (2)

[f1 (x + ut) + f2 (x ut)]

(1)

where S1 and the S2 are the relaying signals. These relaying signals contain information about the fault direction, fault type and the fault location. All this information will appear during the rst few milliseconds after the fault occurrence and then disappear gradually as the signals establish to their post fault steady state values. In the phase domain a healthy line can have induced transients due to a fault on another line. Hence the three phase voltage and current signals are transformed into three independent modes of propagation. The modal components include one earth mode and two aerial modes. These modes have different velocities and attenuation coefcients. The earth

mode velocity is frequency dependent due to the non-uniform distribution of the ground currents and hence will provide inaccurate results. For a fully transposed system, the two aerial modes have the same characteristic impedance and velocity. The modal transformation can be expressed by [8], [Vm ] = [S]1 [Vp ] [Im ] = [Q]1 [Ip ] (3)

ground faults and three elements for phase to phase faults. The impedance Zx calculated by the ground element for phase x is given by, Vx ; x = {a, b, c} (6) Ix + kI0 where Vx and Ix are the phase x voltage and current signals respectively and I0 is the zero sequence current. The factor k allows the relay to measure the positive sequence impedance to the fault and is calculated from, Z0 Z1 k= (7) Z1 where Z0 and Z1 are the zero sequence and positive sequence impedance of the transmission line. The impedance Zxy between phases x and y calculated by the phase elements is given by, Zx = Zxy = Vxy ; Ix Iy x, y = {a, b, c} (8)

where Vp and Ip are the phase voltage and current matrices respectively and Vm and Im are the corresponding modal voltage and current matrices. The commonly used matrices for modal transformation are given in the appendix. B. Fault detection The direction of the fault can be determined by the sequence in which the signals S1 and S2 of a particular mode exceed a predetermined threshold. If S2 exceeds a certain threshold before S1 , then the fault is in the backward direction, else the fault is in the forward direction. When a forward fault is detected, a section of the forward traveling wave relaying signal S2 is stored and correlated with successive sections of the backward traveling wave relaying signal S1 . The N samples of the stored signal S2 contain both pre-fault and post-fault samples of the signal in order to reproduce the complete shape of the wavefront. The mean values of both S1 and S2 are removed prior to correlating the signals to ensure the effect of exponential or power frequency component to be minimum on the process [5]. Discrete crosscovariance function (4), is calculated between the stored signal S2 and the reected signal S1 by, S2 S1 ( ) =
N N 1 X 1 X [S2 (kt) S2 (kt)] N N k=1

Computed values of the impedance can be compared with the positive sequence impedance of the line. The zone of protection can be described as a mho circle or as a quadrilateral characteristic for added exibility in settings. Under steady state conditions, the calculated impedance is more resistive and falls well outside the protection zone. When a fault occurs, the impedance will move inside the protected zone. V. C OMBINED METHOD The combined relay algorithm uses measured voltage and current signals at the relay location to both calculate the impedance of the line and to derive wave components used for traveling wave technique. The traveling wave algorithm requires information contained in the wavefronts and hence a higher sampling rate. On the other hand, the impedance scheme needs only the fundamental frequency component. In the proposed method, the voltage and current signals are sampled at a high frequency and then decimated before transferring the samples to the impedance algorithm. The calculations of the two algorithms are carried out in parallel, but the impedance is calculated only after every specied number of samples depending on the decimation factor while the traveling wave algorithm is executed at each time-step. The traveling wave relay will activate only when a forward fault is detected through its fault detector block. The time duration required to detect a fault by the traveling wave relay will depend on the length of the line being protected. The correlator output is observed within a window of xed time duration after the rst wavefront is detected. The length of the window depends on the travel time of the line length. The positive peak having the maximum amplitude of the correlator output within the specied window corresponds to the fault distance Xf . If Xf falls within the length of the protected line, the zone 2 element of the impedance relay can be accelerated. In order to accommodate for bandwidth limitations of the measuring transducers for close-in faults, a lower threshold has been introduced for Xf . However, for close-in faults the calculated impedance rapidly moves into the primary zone of the impedance relay.

.[S1 (kt + ) C. Fault distance

1 N

k=1

k=1 N X

S1 (kt + )] (4)

A peak in the cross-covariance function is expected when the S1 signal resembles the stored section of S2 at a time delay equal to twice the travel time between the fault location and the relay. The distance to the fault Xf is then given by, .u 2 where u is the surge velocity of the waves. Xf = IV. I MPEDANCE M EASUREMENT The impedance seen at the relay location is calculated using the fundamental frequency components of the voltage and current signals. A Fourier transform based method can be used to derive the fundamental components of the voltage and current signals. The signals are ltered before sampling to avoid aliasing effects. The most common type of distance relay will have six impedance measuring elements - three elements for phase to (5)

Depending on the information contained in the initial wavefront, the wavefront analyzer of the relay makes a decision whether the calculated distance will be reliable. In case of a single phase to ground fault that occurred near a voltage zero, the initial wavefronts will not contain enough information to decide the fault distance through the traveling wave technique. Under such a situation, the trip decision is solely made through the impedance relay. A block diagram of the cascaded algorithm is shown in Fig.2.
CT CB

CVT

V/V & I/V Conversion

LPF & Decimate

Impedance Calculation

Trip Zone

Zone2 Accelerator

TRIP

Analog LPF

Wavefront Analyzer

Decision Maker

A/D Converter

Modal Components

Fault Detector

Correlator

Distance

Fig. 2.

Block diagram of the combined system

VI. S IMULATION STUDIES A simple three phase power system is used to illustrate the proposed method. The voltage and current signals as observed at the relay location are obtained through PSCAD electromagnetic transient program [9]. The measured signals are sampled at 19.2kHz to obtain a clear replica of the fault generated transients [10]. These samples were then ltered and decimated to 8 samples per cycle for line impedance calculations. The transmission lines are represented with the frequency-dependent model. The line parameters and conguration are given in the appendix. The power system used for simulation studies is shown in Fig.3. The relay R is located at busbar A. The relay protects line AB.
300km 160km

characteristic impedance of 278. The Clarke transformation is used for the calculation of modal quantities. After a forward fault is detected, the positive peak in the correlator output within a window of 2.07ms is used to nd the distance to the fault. This time window corresponds to the travel time of length AB. The primary protection zone for the impedance relay is set to 80% and the zone 2 is set to 140% of line AB. The zone 2 element has a delay of 400ms. The distance calculated from the traveling wave relay XT W , is used to determine whether the fault is on the line AB. XT W is subject to lower and upper threshold to accommodate for bandwidth limitations and calculation errors. For the simulations shown, the lower and upper limits are set to 20% and 98% of the line length respectively. That means if XT W is between 60km and 294km and the line impedance enters the zone 2, a trip signal is issued by the hybrid relay. If the traveling wave relay could not detect a fault, the primary protection will trip the breaker. If the fault is outside the primary zone, the zone 2 element will trip the breaker after 400ms. A fault is applied at a location Xf km away from the relay location R along the line AB. Using incremental modal components, the relaying signals S1 and S2 are derived. A portion of the forward wavefront S2 is stored and correlated with the backward waves S1 . The correlator output is checked for the positive maximum. The voltage and current signals are ltered and decimated before calculating the impedance of the line. Fig. 4 shows the waveforms for a phase A to ground fault applied at a point 270km away from R when phase A voltage is at a maximum. The correlator peak occurs at 1.85ms after the forward wavefront is detected and this corresponds to 272km. The traveling wave relay issues a trip signal 3.48ms after the fault occurred. The zone 2 element of the impedance relay detects the fault 11.5ms after the fault occurred. So the hybrid relay issues a trip signal at 11.5ms. The impedance loci of the ground elements of the impedance relay are shown in Fig.5. The fault impedance of phase A element falls outside the primary zone of protection.
500
S1

Relay Signals

S2

kV

-500 Correlator Output 0.4

R
Xf km

F B C
m 0k 22

p.u.
0 -0.2
TW relay

0.2

Trip Signals

Impedance relay

0.5

D
0 0 2 4 6 time(ms) 8 10 12

Fig. 3.

Simulation model of the 500kV three phase power system

The traveling wave relaying signals are derived for mode 2 which has a propagation velocity of 290km/ms and modal

Fig. 4.

The results of the simulation for A-G fault 270km away

Impedance plane 200 Phase A Phase B Phase C

150

100

50

-50

on impedance measurement principle, at the two ends of the transmission line AB. The standard practice is to send a trip signal from one relay to the other through the communication channel when a fault is detected in its primary protection zone. Then the breakers will be opened at both ends of the line. The time delay due to the communication channel is modelled with a standard delay block and set to the travel time between busbars A and B plus a xed delay for initiating the pilot signal. For the given transmission line, the delay is approximately 1.6ms.

-100

-150

Prefault impedance

320km
400

-200 -100

-50

50

100

150 R

200

250

300

350

R1 A
Xf km

R2 B

Fig. 5.

Phase A to ground fault - the impedance loci of the ground relays

Communication Channel

Table I summarizes the results obtained through the simulations for different fault conditions in the system. The faults are applied at different locations and fault inception angles. The results show how the faults outside line AB are identied and the trip signals are issued only through the impedance relay. When the fault inception angle is very small as in the B-G fault at 290km in Table I, the traveling wave relay is unable to detect the fault. The impedance relay operates in the usual manner with a 400ms delay. In a similar situation, when the fault is in the primary zone of the impedance relay as in the phase C to ground fault at 135km, the primary detects the fault and issues a trip signal after 9.0ms. The results show a considerable improvement in the fault detection time. The overall scheme is not only fast, but also reliable.
TABLE I
SIMULATION RESULTS

Fig. 6.

A protection scheme with an end to end communication channel

Fault B-G C-G A-G B-G C-G ABC-G AB ABC-G B-G

Xf 75 135 270 290 255 180 260 360 330

36o 7o 90o 6o 59o 76o

tT W 1.25 3.12 3.01 2.24 3.01 4.00 3.69

tZ2 5.4 7.9 9.5 9.6 7.9 8.0 7.1 12.6 11.1

tZ 6.5 9.0 12.6 -

XT W 75.6 272.4 256.2 181.6 264.2 357.9 327.6

tT RIP 5.4 9.0 9.5 409 7.9 8.0 7.1 412 411

A phase C to ground fault is applied 260km away from relay R1 at a voltage maximum. The resulted waveforms are shown on Fig.7. The relay R1 is assumed to work as a conventional distance relay as well as a hybrid relay proposed in this paper. The relay R2 is just a distance relay based on impedance measurement. The primary protection zone of both relays R1 and R2 are set to 80% of the line. The above fault falls inside the zone 2 of the relay R1 and the primary zone of the relay R2 . The traveling wave relay detects the fault to be 262.1km away and the zone 2 element of impedance relay of R1 detects the fault after 10.4ms. A trip signal to the breaker is issued by R1 at 10.4ms. The relay R2 detects the fault to be in its primary zone after 8.2ms. Due to the delay associated with the communication channel, the trip signal issued by R2 appears at R1 after 9.8ms. It can be seen from this example that the proposed hybrid method has a close response time to a protection scheme with an end-to-end communication channel. Fig.8 shows the impedance loci corresponding to the relay R1 while Fig.9 shows those corresponding to the relay R2 . VII. C ONCLUSIONS The combined algorithm can be used to quickly detect faults on full length of high voltage long transmission lines. The impedance relay assures the security of the protection scheme. The fast fault detection improves the stability margins of the overall system. A laboratory prototype has shown the capability of modern digital signal processors in performing the desired calculations efciently. Impedance elements detect non-travelling wave type faults. The zone 2 element prevents possible mal-operation of the travelling wave relay from nonfault transients caused by switching operations. The overall scheme negates the unhealthy features while taking the full advantage of the positive features of the different algorithms.

Xf = The distance to the fault (km) = The fault inception angle tT W = The time to correlator peak from the fault inception time(ms) tZ2 = The zone 2 trip time of the impedance relay (ms) tZ = The primary zone trip time of the impedance relay (ms) XT W = The fault distance calculated by traveling wave relay (km) tT RIP = The time for actual trip signal (ms)

To compare the possible improvements of the proposed method against a distance protection scheme with an endto-end communication channel, the simple power system on Fig.6 is used. There are two distance relays, both working

500

S1

Wave Components

S2

A PPENDIX 1) Modal transformation matrices that can be used for fully transposed transmission lines: Clarke transformation 1 1 1 1 1 [S]1 = [Q]1 = 1 2 3 0 3 3 Karrenbauer transformation 1 1 1 [S]1 = [Q]1 = 1 1 1 0 3 1 0 1 Wedepohl transformation 1 1 1 [S]1 = [Q]1 = 1 3 0 3 2 2 3 1 1 1 2 2

kV

-500 0.4

Correlator Output

p.u.

0.2 0 -0.2
TW relay

Trip Signals

Zone2 Imp relay

1 0.5 0
Trip signal from far end w/delay

Trip Signal Comparison

Hybrid relay

1 0.5 0

6 time(ms)

10

12

Fig. 7.
200

The results of the simulation for C-G fault 260km away

Impedance plane Phase A Phase B Phase C

150

100

50

2) The transmission line details used for simulation are given below: Line Data Phase Conductor: Conductor radius 1.755 102 m No of subconductors in a bundle 3 DC resistance 4.890 102 /km Bundle spacing 45.72 102 m Ground Conductor: Conductor radius 5.486 103 m DC resistance 2.865 /km No of ground wires 2 Earth resistivity : 100.0 m Line Conguration Horizontal (m) Phase 1 6.7 Phase 2 0 Phase 3 6.7 Ground 4.94 Vertical (m) 32.00 41.69 32.00 47.24 Sag (m) 17.67 17.67 17.67 10.67

-50

-100

-150

Prefault impedance

-200 -100

-50

50

100

150 R

200

250

300

350

400

R EFERENCES
Fig. 8.
300 Phase A Phase B Phase C

The impedance loci of the ground elements of relay R1 for C-G fault
Impedance plane

[1] B.J. Mann and I.F. Morrison, Digital Calculation of Impedance for Transmission [2] [3] [4] [5]
Line Protection, IEEE Transactions on Power Apparatus and Systems, Vol.PAS90, No.1, pp.270-279, Jan 1971 Bibliography of Relay Literature, 1998 IEEE Committee Report,IEEE Trans. on Power Delivery, Vol.15, No.4, pp. 1147-1156, Oct 2000 J.S. Thorp, A.G. Phadke, S.H. Horowitz, J.E. Beehler, Limits to impedance relaying, IEEE transactions Power Apparatus and Systems, Vol.PAS-98, No.1, pp.246-256, Jan/Feb 1979 Z.Q. Bo, M.A. Redfern, G.C. Weller, Positional Protection of Transmission Line Using Fault Generated High Frequency Transient Signals., IEEE Trans. on Power Delivery, Vol.15, No.3, pp. 888-894, Jul 2000 P.A. Crossley and P.G. McLaren, Distance Protection based on traveling Waves, IEEE transactions Power Apparatus and Systems, Vol.PAS-102, No.9, pp.29712983, Sep 1983 E.H. Shehab-Eldin and P.G. McLaren, traveling Wave Distance Protection Problem Areas and Solutions, IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, Vol.3, No.3, pp. 894-902, Jul 1988 V. Pathirana, P.G. McLaren, E. Dirks, Investigation of a hybrid traveling wave/impedance relay principle, Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering, IEEE CCECE 2002, May 2002 L.M. Wedepohl, Application of matrix methods to the solution of traveling-wave phenomena in polyphase systems, Proceedings of IEE, Vol.110, No.12, pp.22002212, Dec 1963 PSCAD Version 3.0 User Manual, Manitoba HVDC Research Centre, 2000 G.W. Swift, The spectra of fault-induced transients, IEEE Transactions on Power Apparatus and Systems, Vol.PAS-98, No.3, pp.940-947, May/Jun 1979

250

200

150

100

50

[6]
Prefault impedance

-50

[7]
-100 -150

[8]
-350 -300 -250 -200 -150 R -100 -50 0 50 100

-200 -400

[9] [10]

Fig. 9.

The impedance loci of the ground elements of relay R2 for C-G fault