Numerical Protection of Power Systems

Brief History of Protection Technology

Electromagnetic relays .
This is the first generation oldest relaying system. The limitations are: Low speed of operation Change in characteristics over a period due to ageing effect. Component failure leading to relay failure. Bulky Excessive power consumption. Imposes high burden on CT No fault data available except phase indication
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 Static Relays:
The next generation relays were static relay. Static relays were manufactured as semi conductor devices which incorporates transistors, ICs, capacitors, small micro processors etc. It has a comparator circuit, which compares two or more voltages & currents & gives an output, which is applied to output relay to finally close the contact. The performance of static relay is better than electromagnetic relays as they are fast acting and accuracy of measurement is better than electromagnetic relay.
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The constraint in static relay is limited function/features. In the last decade, some micro processors were introduced in this relay to achieve the functions like i) Fuse failure features ii) Self check feature iii) Dead Pole detection and iv) Carrier aided protection features. In spite of above, the performance of static relay is greatly affected by the following limitations:
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1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Most of the limitations of Electromagnetic relays. Effect of environmental conditions like humidity, high ambient temperature, dust accumulation on PCB leading to tracking. The component failure. Non availability of fault data Characteristic variations with passage of time.

 Numerical relays: The modern relays which are now available in market are numerical relays. These relays are built on the central processing unit like computers and variety of functions can be achieved by mathematical calculations based on algorithms. Most of earlier applications of computers were off line, but with advancement in computer technology, now improved reliability, large memory, compactness, and speed of computation is achieved. These additional features have pushed the computer application to on line activities including signal processing, process control and communication.
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Architecture of Numerical Relaying Technology

Numerical relays have built in computing devices, and digital techniques are being used to acquire data regarding current and voltage derived from power system through CT & PT. These are called analog inputs, and are processed and arrived at decision from trip or non-trip of associated breaker. The on line computing device is fast acting microprocessor and entire operation from data acquisition to decision making can be completed in about 20 milliseconds (i.e. 1 cycle). The relay operates on in-built software, which includes the settings governed relay tripping logic. These settings can be set by communication channel from local or remote or HMI. 7

Basic Terminologies
The numerical rely has following terminology. 1. Input/Output: Inputs may be C.T, P.T external contacts, D.C etc. while outputs will be contacts to be used for the various executions. 2. Software: Every company has its own software used for relay configuration, settings, LED assignments, etc. 3. HMI (Human to machine interface):Some primary data can be available without communication through P.C on local display of unit. i.e. menu. It will display the data viz. service values, fault current & voltage prior to fault and during fault, time to operate relay, distance of fault, indications and tripping phase affected, carrier inter trip, carrier signal send/receive etc.
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4. Communication: This is done with relay by PC through software for respective make relay. Relay can be set, configured and read by PC and date can be taken from relay, which is stored in relay for analysis. 5. D.R (Disturbance report): The relay has storage facility of events and DR. The DR can take waveforms of voltage, current, for each phase and neutral. The information is having lot of data recorded for analysis. This data can be useful for the upgrading for the protection coordination. The decision taking time by relay, operating time of relay, tripping time, carrier send/receive are precisely recorded by relay.

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6. Logics: Chart can be prepared in relay for assigning special functions in addition to existing function of the relay. 7. Metering: The numerical relays have also now metering facility with max/min records. 8. Digital Signal Processor: General purpose processors are inefficient at executing the mathematical operations common in Digital Signal processing. This inefficiency gave rise to processors specialized for DSP.
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These are in general faster in computation compared to microcontrollers. Early DSP processors used specialized multiplication hardware and instructions to achieve fast multiplications, and contained additional hardware, such as wide accumulator registers, to increase numeric fidelity. Clock speeds of current mainstream DSPs have increased to between 50 and 100 MHz, with the newest processor executing at 200 MHz or higher. Some high-end DSP processors include two multiplication units, and can compute two Instructions in every cycle. At 200 MHz, each Instruction pair thus requires only 5 ns.
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Important Terminologies used in Numerical Technology

The important terminologies are defined hereunder: Disturbances: The time of disturbance It is defined as the local terminal date and time when the first triggering signal started the disturbance recording. The trigger signal Which starts the recording. Indications Activated during the recorded disturbance
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 Terminal configuration procedure

Fault location Provides information about the distance to the fault and the fault loop used for the calculation. Trip values Are displayed as phasor (RMS value and Phase Angle) of the currents and voltages, before and During the fault.

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 Service Report menu: Service values Presents the mean values of measured current, Voltage, active and reactive power and frequency, Available when the transformer module option is Installed. Phasors Presents the primary and secondary phasor of Measured currents and voltages, available when the Fault locator option is installed. Functions Presents the presently measured values and other Information.

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 Input/Output Displays present logical values of all binary inputs/ Outputs of all installed I/O modules in the Relay terminal. Disturbance report Available free memory for further disturbance recording. Active group Four groups of setting values can be stored and any one can be made as active group. The present setting of active group/s can be viewed here. Time The current internal time for the Relay terminal can be viewed here. The time is displayed in the form YYYY-MMM-DD and hh:mm:ss. All values are presented with digits. The month is presented with the first three letters in current month. Internal signals Presents information about all functional outputs and internal signals in the terminal.
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In built software can be changed to simulate different types of relaying characteristics depending on requirement. Thus a flexible relay is realized which can perform all protections functions e.g. over current, under voltage, directional, and impedance protection. These are generally termed as numerical relays and are presently used for power system protection. Some of these relays also function as event recorders and fault locators. These multi functional numerical relays have made the panels for the protection systems very compact. Thus one can see the improvements that have taken place in the recent past in the filed of 18 protective relaying.

The various features available with Numerical Distance Protection Relays

Flexibility of selecting quadrilateral or Mho characteristics. SOTF feature. Pole discrepancy feature. Fuse failure. Loss of voltage Fault locator Disturbance recorder. Weekend in feed and current reversal features.
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 Over and above, these relays also incorporate other protection functions as under:
Autoreclosure feature. Check synchronizing feature. Directional /Non directional Over current and Earth fault protection. LBB protection Over voltage/under voltage protection.
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 Thus it is seen that in numerical relay, number of protections can be combined and one single relay can be used for entire line or transformer protection etc. For the reasons stated above, and also cost competitiveness of numerical relays, modern power system are now equipped with numerical relays extensively.

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Summarizing Benefits of Numerical Technology

Availability of fault data and disturbance record. Helps analysis of faults by recording details of Nature of fault Magnitude of fault level Breaker problem C.T. saturation Duration of fault Additional features available with numerical relays like Auto reclosure SOTF Power swing detection & blocking/tripping Time synchronization with GPS Weak end infeed & current reversal feature LBB Protection V.T. Fuse failure Loss of voltage feature helps block the relay in case of momentary/permanent loss of voltage.

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