Automated Testing Of Busbar Differential Protection

Using A System-Based Approach

Christopher Pritchard | OMICRON electronics

Product Management
Klaus, Austria
[email protected]

Abstract— Due to the high short circuit power apparent in

transmission and large distribution substations, dedicated
busbar protection is in use. The impact of a busbar outage
leads to high requirements regarding the speed and stability of
a busbar protection. As a result of different busbar topologies
within substations, every configuration, and especially the
logic, of the protection is unique. To guarantee accurate
performance, testing the whole busbar protection during
commissioning is indispensable.

Test and verification of a busbar protection for complex

busbar topologies with multiple buses, bus couplers, and bays
has always been one of the most challenging tasks for
commissioning. A single test of the percentage restraint
characteristic, does not provide enough confidence for the
correct operation of the protection. Using a system-based
approach, where the whole busbar topology with all its
disconnector configurations is modelled, offers new
possibilities for all fault scenarios which are important to
verify.

This paper will share experiences from different utilities

around the world using this novel test approach and the errors
that were found.
FIGURE 1: PERCENTAGE CHARACTERISTIC
Keywords—Busbar protection testing, system-based testing
State of the art testing solutions can visualize the
I. TESTING THE DIFFERENTIAL ELEMENTS characteristic and by placing a shot in the plane the software
module will calculate currents for the test set and afterwards
The main protection function of a busbar protection are assesses for trip and no-trip accordingly. The test set will
provided by differential elements, which apply Kirchhoff’s inject two three-phase currents into two bay-units.
law to identify faults within their area. The differential
measurements are usually stabilized with a percentage But already testing a simple percentage characteristic can
characteristic as shown in figure 1. become challenging with busbar protection. To achieve bus
selective tripping the protection replicates the bus topology
based on the disconnector position (a.k.a. disconnector or
isolator replication). To maintain high security an additional
check zone is applied that has to pick-up. The check zone is
an additional differential element with one zone containing
all bay current transformers (CT). The check zone is
independent of the disconnector replication [1]. To avoid
over-stabilization a check-zone applies special logic to
choose the restraining quantity requiring a special test setup ,
where one three phase current is looped through two bays
and a second injects current to a third bay [2]. Also the bus Due to all the possible busbar topologies, almost every
selective element and the check zone element overlap. To application of a busbar protection system is unique. Thus
easily test each characteristic settings are changed, elements there is no standard way of testing the disconnector
replication and other logics. To correctly operate, the busbar
protection needs to know the topology and disconnector
position for all bays, sectionalizers and couplers during
operation. Therefor a test system has to mimic the whole
busbar power system with all the binary information of the
disconnector states and the different bay currents in a
consistent manner. Consistent means, that the analogue
values are plausible, for example that a current is only
measured when the within the corresponding current path all
FIGURE 2 DIFFERENT BUSBAR ZONES disconnectors circuit breakers are closed. Otherwise
functions like measurement supervision, disconnector
are disabled or test contacts are used during test. We supervision and breaker failure functions will prevent the
consider this as a very dangerous and questionable approach. protection from working as under real world conditions and
There is a potential risk of leaving the protection in an fail the test.
inconsistent state or bypassing the actual protection logic that Ideally current is injected into all bays simultaneously,
will be in operation. but depending on the amount of bays and the available test
sets, this is not always feasible. But already two six phase
test sets can feed into three feeder bays and one coupling
So far such settings-based test can verify, that the bay, enabling to run almost all important test cases. After all
element and relay is working correct according to the given feeder bays have successfully passed, the test sets can be
settings. Stopping to test here would fall short of the connected to next bay units. Depending on the substation
complexity of modern busbar protection. Special attention is design and in case of a distributed protection, the bay units
required when testing: may be several meters apart from each other. This results in
the key features of a test system:
• Logic functions e.g. breaker failure (BF) and dead
zone fault detection • Simulation of disconnector states.
• Correct configuration of the disconnector • Calculation of all test set currents, for each test step
replication and each state in the test sequence.
• The overall protection incl. all functions are • Controlling multiple time synchronized test sets.
working together
• All current inputs are working with the right CT
ratio. Without a system-based test solution this is often
achieved by setting up a spreadsheet. Each row or test step
• Coordination with bay, feeder and backup
has multiple columns defining disconnector states and bay
protection currents. When executing, the disconnector positions are
Potential issues in these areas are usually classified as mimicked according to the current row by bridging the
logic, settings and design errors. As studies prove [3] that for binary contacts at the bay units or with a custom made
any protection this is the most common cause for errors. As switchboard. The currents are transferred to one or more
testing protection always has to find the right balance sequencer files in case of multiple test sets. Creating such a
between depth and resources, it is important to put the effort spreadsheet and making it executable can be very time
in testing where errors are most likely. Therefor we suggest a consuming. The effort is growing exponentially with the size
system-based test as an integral part of busbar testing. of the bus. A non-technical issue is that these spreadsheets
are not very comprehensible. Usually they are prepared by a
test engineer transforming a real world scenario into a
II. SYSTEM-BASED TESTING spreadsheet row. If the technician in the field is a different
A setting-based test verifies elements and functions of a person and tries to understand the test step row, he
relay according to the given settings. Contrary a system- transforms the spreadsheet back into a real world scenario in
based test validates if the protection system is working his mind. This permanent mind mapping is inefficient and a
correctly under real power system conditions. Instead of potential source of error.
testing a characteristic with a steady-state output, faults (or
other system conditions) are calculated with a power system A system-based testing tool can be an all in one solution
simulation and directly outputted. This way it is tested that to this. To model the power system the bus topology,
the protection system with its logic and settings are actually including the CT ratios and ideally the short circuit currents
working for the power system they have been designed for. of the feeders, can be edited with a single line editor.
Additionally a system-based test saves a lot of time during Everything to define a test step can now be done within the
preparation, execution and troubleshooting of a test, as we single-line.
will see in the following paragraphs.
 FIGURE 3: SINGLE LINE EDITOR

A. Disconnector simulation
Within a test case the disconnectors can be operated
directly in the editor. That way the power system simulation FIGURE 4 TEST SETUP FOR A SYSTEM-BASED BUSBAR
will simulate the correct current sharing. Additionally a PROTECTION TEST
system-based test solution can map the double bit position of
the disconnector to binary outputs of the test set. Before a Time synchronization is required, when working with
test step is executed, the SW will set all binary outputs of the multiple test sets. Every time delay in execution will result in
test set according to the defined disconnector position. This a phase shift between the test set currents, which can
way, the test can be fully automated without the need to ultimately trip the differential element even under normal
manually bridge disconnector contact before every test step, load flow. To avoid the tedious setup of a GPS Antenna for
reducing the source of errors and increasing efficiency. If all every single test set, the test sets can be connected to a PTP
disconnectors are simulated by the test solution, many enabled Ethernet network. This setup only requires one
outputs will be required. Therefor some test set can easily be reference PTP master time source connected to a special
extended with binary outputs at a fraction of the costs of an switch (transparent clock). From there the time is distributed
additional test set. to all test sets. At the same time this network can be used to
communicate between the system-based test software and the
B. Current Calculation test sets.
The current calculation is almost effortless and constant,
no matter how complex the topology is. By changing the D. Testing complex logic sequences
load flow, placing faults and adding breaker events within In many test steps it is important to react to the protection
the SW, the power system simulation calculates the current commands. When a trip command is sent, the breaker has to
samples for all CT locations in one go. open within the simulation and no current flow must be
simulated. Again the simulation must be consistent again. If
C. Working with multiple test sets simultaneously this is not the case, it would be considered as a breaker
When the currents signals have been calculated, they get failure and logic that would become active after the first trip
transferred to one or multiple test sets. Afterwards the SW cannot be executed. The capability of a simulation to react to
sets a start time for execution. As all test sets are time a command of the system under test is usually called real-
synchronized, they will start execution at the same time. time closed-loop. But real-time simulation systems are only
After execution the test sets will send back the measured suitable for the lab, require expert knowledge and a high
binary events to the SW, where they can be assessed. All investment, while test sets can be distributed. A suitable
these steps can be controlled by one SW and start with a alternative to hard real time is to use of an iterative closed-
simple click on the execute button. There is no user loop algorithm. When applying this algorithm to a simulation
coordination or separate test document per test set required. with a busbar fault, the first iteration gets injected without
any CB commands. Nonetheless, the protection will respond
to the fault with a trip command which is recorded by the test
software. Because we assume that the relay should respond
with the same trip time under the same current waveform as
in the previous injection, we will inject the same current
waveform from start followed by a breaker open event,
shortly after the expected trip. When another trip or close a real-time simulator. The benefit in using this is the
command is sent, that has not been part of the previous simplicity when testing logic. After placing the fault, the
simulations, a third iteration is executed now including two iterative closed-loop will take over. Figure 5 shows an
breaker events. This algorithm continues till no new example with two iterations.
unknown trip or close command has been sent by the
protection. The last iteration then achieves a similar result as

FIGURE 5: EXEMPLARY ITERATIVE CLOSED-LOOP SEQUENCE

a test case is as easy as just dragging a fault and pressing

III. REAL WORLD EXPERIENCE execute, testers are performing more tests with more depth.
Over the last three years we gathered a lot of experiences
testing busbar protection with a dedicated system-based A. Error in dead zone
testing solution as written in detail in [4] and [5]. In this For 100% selectivity in coupling bays usually two CTs
paper we wanted to emphasize the importance of system- on each side of the CB are installed, so that the bus selective
based testing, so we summarized a few errors that were zones overlap. Often for economic reasons only one CT is
found during several field and factory tests. In most cases the
system-based approach was used the very first time by the
test engineer or technician, which is why often the protection
was already tested with their well-established testing tools
and methods. So it can be said that most of the errors would
have not been found without the system-based testing tool.
In retrospective all errors we describe here can also be found
with traditional testing tools, but we experienced that the
simplicity of a dedicated system-based test solution
positively influences the quality. When creating and running

FIGURE 6: FAULT IN DEAD-ZONE

installed which creates a so called dead-zone between the CT
and CB. Modern busbar protection has special logic to detect
faults within the dead zone, by measuring the coupling CB
status bits. For the commissioning of a busbar protection for
a double bus topology, a test case was defined that should
validate, that a fault in the dead zone while the coupling CB
was open, lead to an instantaneous trip of bus B only. (If the
CB would be closed, bus A would trip, followed by bus b).
The protection tripped unselectively within the test. The
error was resolved within the settings of the busbar
protection.

B. Two field units in coupling bay

FIGURE 8: OUTSIDE FAULT
The following error was found in a distributed busbar
protection for a double bus topology with an additional
transfer bus. Because of limited inputs on the first bay unit a D. Incorrectly wired neutral current input
second bay unit was installed in the coupling bay. During The following error was discovered in a busbar
commissioning, the test cases with dead-zone faults initially protection for a double busbar in a distributed network. The
failed. Due to the configuration both bay units had to provide power system was operated with low impedance grounding,
CB status bits, but only one bay unit was wired to the CB leading to small currents for phase to ground faults. Within
status contacts. The issue was resolved by wiring the CB the default differential element such a small fault current
status contacts also to the second unit. would be over-restrained with the full three phase load
current. The utility addressed this issue by choosing a busbar
protection with a dedicated percentage restraint characteristic
for neutral current (IN). The IN was measured via separate
current input connected to a Holmgreen circuit. A system-
based test case showed, that external phase to ground faults
caused an unselective busbar trip. This was caused by the
wrong polarity of the IN current input. Previous non system-
based test, did not uncover this error as only each bay was
tested with a single current injection.

FIGURE 7: TWO BAY UNITS IN COUPLING BAY

FIGURE 9: BUS FAULT ON MIDDLE SECTION

C. Unwanted trip on BF command
This following error was discovered during the validation
of a protection concept in a testing lab. The system under test IV. CONCLUSION
consisted of a low impedance busbar protection and the The errors found in the field proved, that system testing
dedicated feeder protection relays. Within the test case a is a necessity in testing modern busbar protection. A
fault outside of the differential zone was simulated. While dedicated system-based testing solution greatly simplifies
this fault should be handled by the feeder protection, the performing such tests.
busbar protection immediately starts an internal BF timer on
feeder pick up. Because the system-based test also simulated
the CB trip delay, it was discovered that there was not V. BIBLIOGRAPHY
enough security margin in the BF timer setting, which could
lead to an unselective trip of the busbar. [1] G. Ziegler, Numerical Differential Protection: Principles and
Applications, Erlangen: Publicis Publishing, 2012.
[2] Siemens, SIPROTEC 7ss52x Manual, Siemens, 2004.
[3] Protection System Misoperations Task Force, "Misoperations Report,"
North American Electric Reliability Corperation (NERC), Atlana,
2013.
[4] C. Pritchard and T. Hensler, "Test and verification of a busbar
protection using a simulation-based iterative closed-loop approach in
the field," in Australian Protection Symposium, Sydney, 2014.
[5] F. Fink, J. Köppel and T. Hensler, "Effective commissioning of bus bar
protection systems using a dynamic simulation in the field," in
Development in Power System Protection 2016 (DPSP), Birmingham,
2016.