1.

SEF protection is adopted for overhead line feeders considering the fact that most of the
faults in ovrhead lines involve earth (85% or better) and high resistance type yielding very
little current.

The sensitive earth fault relay, as the name implies is set sensitive to detect a high resistance
fault and is typically a few amps. As is the case always, sensitive protection increases the
chances of spurious operation and the long time delay is meant to prevent such new
nuisance trips.

CTUM 15 is Alstom's sensitive earth fault relay quite popular in distribution systems in India.
This has setting range from 1 to 16% (of CT secondary) and time delay settable to many
seconds (up to 60sec, if my memory is right).

2. SEF-protection is used in rural areas, where if one of the conductors falls on the ground
(with a high resistance) it remains energized because of the low leakage current and thus
can cause danger to humans and animals. There are two ways (which I'm aware of) for this
kind of scheme:

1. SEF relay used with a balancing core/ring CT.

2. SEF relay used in the residual connection of a O/C and E/F scheme. The SEF-element is in
series with the normal E/F element.
Some of the new type of electronic relays have a SEF-function incorperated into the relay.

The current-setting is quite low with a long definite trip-time. If I remember correctly the
settings on some of our local electricity provider's lines are between 1%-2% with a 6 second
trip-time.

In sensitive earth fault protection, one dedicated Core Balance CT is used to detect any
unbalance in 3 phases and it's setting is so low so it's called sensitive earth fault protection.

Where in Standby Earth fault protection, CT placed in neutral only and detect zero sequence
current.

Both are backup protection to REF protection also.