Fundamentals of Modern Electrical Substations - Part 2 - R2
Fundamentals of Modern Electrical Substations - Part 2 - R2
Fundamentals of Modern Electrical Substations - Part 2 - R2
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Introduction
Part 2 of the course “Fundamentals of Modern Electrical Substations” is concentrated on
substation auxiliary and control systems which play a major role in allowing all station
equipment to function properly, thus, fulfilling the main substation mission to support
reliable and effective operation of power systems.
The following auxiliary and control systems will be considered, including explanations of
their mission, operation principles and arrangement:
Relay Protection
Metering Systems
Auxiliary AC/DC Power Systems
Station Alarm and Remote Control Systems
Relay Protection
This section provides an overview of relay protection philosophy. Its mission is to detect
abnormal conditions in power systems, which would in the following actions:
Alarm
Isolation of defective part of the system through operation of circuit interrupting
devices
Sensitivity: ability to detect all abnormal conditions for which the system is
designed to detect
Selectivity: ability to initiate isolation of only the defected parts of the power
system
Reliability: ability to operate with minimum failures of maloperations
Economical effectiveness: ability to fulfill all necessary functions at a minimal
cost
Improved redundancy: application of primary and back-up relay systems for
important equipment
Relays
Control and test switches
Auxiliary transformers
Terminal blocks
Cabling & wiring
Electromechanical
Microprocessor
Relay racks
Relay panels
For example, Fig. 1 indicates electromechanical relays installed on relay racks. Similarly,
Fig. 2 indicates microprocessor relays installed on the panel.
Overcurrent Protection
Distance Protection
Differential Protection:
Undervoltage Protection
Overvoltage Protection
Underfrequency Protection
Let’s consider some of these schemes in a greater detail starting with the most popular.
Overcurrent Protection
Its objective is to detect current levels higher than a predetermined value (relay setting).
The following are various types of overcurrent protection:
Instantaneous
With time delay
Directional – operates when:
– Measured current is higher than the setting
– Power flows through the system element in a certain direction
Non-directional
Let’s discuss the reasoning behind the different types of overcurrent protection using, as
an example, the power system shown in Fig.3. This power system consists of two (2)
lines, three (3) substations and six (6) circuit breakers.
The main goal of correctly selecting a relay protection scheme is to deenergize a failed
part of the power system sooner than later, as having a fault condition in the system
longer than necessary is damaging for the equipment and unsafe for personnel. At the
Given the aforementioned, let’s consider a fault F1 on the line L1, which connects
substations A & B. The best way to deenergize the fault is to trip breaker B1 at substation
B and A1 at substation A, and we want it to happen almost immediately (for modern
relays, it may take a few cycles, let’s say, 6 cycles, which for a 60 Hz system amounts to
0.1 s). However, breaker A2 at Substation A will see the same current as breaker A1 and,
unless we delay its tripping, it will open simultaneously with breaker A1, taking the
whole substation A and its customers out of service, which is not acceptable. For that not
to happen, a tripping of breaker A2 for faults on Line 1 should be delayed compared with
the tripping of breaker A1, so A1 will trip first and the protection scheme will abort the
tripping of A2, because the fault is not fed from substation A anymore.
Another way to provide a selectivity for the operation of breakers A1 and A2 in this
example is to use a directional scheme, which differentiates a direction of power flow
from the bus into the line (allowed to trip) from another flow direction which is from the
line into the bus (trip is blocked). Based on this principle, for example, for fault F2 on
line L2 directional protection will allow only breaker A2 to trip, but A1 will stay closed
leaving substation A in service, which is exactly what we wanted to achieve.
The simplest overcurrent protection is installed on low voltage breakers that typically
exist inside our homes. For example, if a receptacle and its wiring are designed for a 15A
current, but we attempt to plug into this receptacle a device consuming 20A, the
corresponding breaker will trip to avoid overheating of wiring that may result in a fire.
Consequently, we will have to unplug the device causing the problem, find the breaker
box and reset the breaker.
Simplicity
Low cost
Disadvantages:
Distance Protection
To address the coordination difficulties that may occur in overcurrent protection, a
distance protection scheme may be used. The objective of this scheme is to detect the
impedance levels that are lower than predetermined values (relay settings).
The most popular type of distance protection is a step-distance relaying scheme for line
protection, which consists of three distance relays or one 3-zone relay with the following
zones of protection, shown in Fig. 4:
Disadvantages:
Differential Protection
For further improvement of relay protection schemes, let’s consider a differential
protection which has the following objective: differentiation between external and
internal faults in reference to protected equipment by comparing the direction of currents
on boundaries of protected equipment:
For internal fault, currents on both ends of the line are directed from the bus into
the line. As a result, breakers 1 and 2 will trip clearing the fault.
For external fault, current on one end (breaker 1) is directed from the bus into the
line, but on another end (breaker 2) from the line into the bus. As a result, only
breaker 2 will trip, but breaker 1 will stay closed and the line between breakers 1
and 2 will stay in service.
High accuracy
High speed of clearing the fault
Disadvantages:
Relative complexity
Need in communication between ends of the line
That’s why, besides the regular line or transformer relay protection system, we need to
install a breaker failure protection, whose mission is:
Isolation of the faulted element of the power system if the circuit breaker
associated with this element:
As an example, let’s consider a fault F1 on the line L1 in the system shown in Fig.6:
Let’s make an assumption that breaker 1 failed to clear the fault F1. In this case, a
Breaker Failure Protection will trip adjacent breakers 2, 3 and 4. The corresponding logic
diagram is shown in Fig. 7.
Fig. 7. Logic Diagram of Breaker Failure Protection Operation in Sys. Shown in Fig. 6.
Reclosing
Faults in power systems may be transient (temporary) or permanent. The example of a
temporary fault is a tree branch falling on the overhead wires and after that, either going
on fire or falling on the ground. In any case, the reason causing the fault disappears, but
© 2012 Boris Shvartsberg 7
the line remains deenergized because the line relay protection reacted on the original fault
and tripped the breakers on both ends of the line. To avoid lengthy customer outages, we
certainly would like to restore service to the customers and close the breakers if the fault
passed. But the problem is that we never know if the fault is temporary or permanent. All
we can do is close the breakers back after the relay protection tripped them, hoping that
the fault is indeed temporary and the breakers will not trip again. This approach attempts
to close the breakers after the fault is performed by a reclosing scheme whose mission is:
Because faults on underground cables are almost always permanent, reclosing is applied
only to overhead lines where a chance of a temporary fault (based on statistics) is about
70%.
Let’s discuss the sequence of service restoration for an overhead line with two breakers
shown in Fig. 8.
Let’s assume that there is a fault on the line resulting in Breakers 1 & 2 tripping to isolate
the fault. After a time delay, breaker 1 recloses (dead-line reclosing). If the fault persists,
breaker 1 trips, breaker 2 (which has a synchro-check reclosing scheme) doesn’t reclose
because, from one side of it, voltage is 0, but from the other side, it is at a nominal level.
If breaker 1 stays closed, breaker 2 recloses (again, through synchro-check reclosing) and
stays closed.
Like any other relay scheme, reclosing has advantages and disadvantages as follows:
Disadvantages: If the fault is permanent, the circuit breaker has to interrupt a short
circuit current again, which puts additional stress on the breaker and may lead to
breaker failure, necessity for additional maintenance, etc.
Another supplemental relay scheme that we want to consider is a Transfer Trip System,
whose mission is to trip remote circuit breakers to increase speed of fault clearing or
support a breaker failure scheme operation. To understand the benefit from a transfer trip
system, let’s consider a power system shown in Fig. 9, which is protected by a 3-zone
step distance protection shown in Fig. 4.
If this is the case, a fault clearing without a transfer trip system will be performed as
follows:
At the same time, we would like breaker B1 to trip without a delay as well to reduce a
fault duration in the system. To make it happen, we need distance protection at Zone 1 of
substation A, in addition to tripping of breaker A1 instantaneously to initiate a transfer
trip system which would trip B1 instantaneously as well.
As we saw before, there are several relay schemes that are based on exchange of
information between different parts of the power system (both ends of power lines, for
example), which require establishment of some kind of channels to provide a media for
communication of relay protection systems.
Let’s discuss these channels in a greater detail. The first type is a power line carrier
(PLC) channel, which is based on transmission of high frequency signals (30 – 300 kHz)
via overhead and underground power line conductors. The main issue that should be
resolved in order to transmit a high frequency signal over the same wires and cables,
which are used for transmission and distribution of AC power with 60 Hz frequency, is to
direct a strong communication signal into relay systems which are communicating
instead of it being mixed up with power frequency, getting dispersed into power
equipment and attenuated. To have it accomplished, the PLC system includes numerous
components shown in Fig. 10.
Let’s go through the following PLC components installed on each end of the line and
their functions:
Wave trap 1 prevents loss of communication signal into the station bus by
providing:
Low loss coaxial cable 5 connects the line tuner with transmitter/receiver 6 and
relay scheme 7
To better understand the logic behind the selection of different elements of a PLC system,
let’s, for example, design a wave trap which consists of inductor L and capacitor C
connected in parallel (see Fig. 11).
The total impedance Z of this parallel contour may be found using coil and capacitor
reactive impedances, X(L) and X(C) respectively, as follows:
where
As we can see from equation (1), a wave trap impedance for a carrier frequency signal
reaches infinity (Z = ) if the following condition is met:
Using equation (3), let’s for example calculate a capacitance C of wave trap for the
following conditions:
Solution:
Substituting X(L) and X(C) in equation (3) with their values from equation (2), and using
= 2f, we obtain the following equation:
Advantages:
– Low cost
– Simplicity
– Attenuation of signal
– Low speed of transmission
Because of these deficiencies, PLC is losing its former popularity by being replaced with
more modern types of communication channels, most notably, fiber optic cables whose
mission is transmission of light signals via optical fibers (long strands of very pure glass
about a diameter of a human hair). The example of a fiber optic cable is shown in Fig. 14.
Communication based on the application of fiber optic cables has the following pros and
cons:
Advantages:
1
Reproduced from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fibreoptic.jpg
Under the terms of License http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License
– High cost
– Long restoration time after mechanical failure
The last type of communication channels to be mentioned is a pilot wire which is based
on the use of actual (metallic) line installed between communicating relay systems. One
of the pilot wire options is the use of a leased phone line for relay communication. Being
in use for many years, relay schemes with a pilot wire communication became obsolete
and, because of relatively low reliability of the channel, are frequently being replaced
with systems based on the use of fiber optic cables for communication.
Metering Systems
To operate and maintain power systems efficiently, it is very important to have accurate
information about system values, and the mission of metering systems is to provide this
information. However, real power system currents and voltages may reach very high
numbers (thousands of amperes and volts respectively). To measure these values, they
need to be reduced to much lower numbers that metering equipment can safely handle.
For voltages a nominal value is usually 120 V, phase-to-neutral or phase-to-phase, and
for currents nominal values are 1 A or 5 A. As discussed in Section 1 of this course, this
transformation of currents and voltages is performed by instrument transformers which
have their secondary windings connected to both relay and instrument equipment.
Analog – information is read from the scale (see example in Fig. 15)
Digital – information is read in real numbers from LED screen (see example in
Fig. 16)
The following main equations are used to measure primary values by using the
corresponding secondary quantities:
IS = IP / NI VS = VP / NV (5)
where:
IP , IS – Primary & Secondary Currents;
VP , VS - Primary & Secondary voltages;
NI , NV – Current & Voltage transformation factors
For a better understanding of the process, let’s consider the following problem:
What is the actual apparent power S flowing through the 26-kV wye connected circuit, if
phase ammeter and voltmeter readings are 3 A and 70 V, respectively, NI = 2000/5 and
NV = 26,400/120 (both values are line voltages)?
Solution:
As we know, a three-phase power S may be found using primary phase current IP and
voltage VP as follows:
S = 3 x IP x VP (6)
Using equation (5), it may be rewritten in the following way:
S = 3 x IS x NI x VS x NV (7)
For a normal operation, many substation components (including both major and control
equipment) require some low voltage power supply (AC or DC) which is provided by
auxiliary AC and DC power systems, respectively.
Let’s review them both starting with the AC system. Its main components are:
Lighting
Heaters
A.C. motors for substation equipment:
– Voltage regulators
– Transformer cooling (fans, oil pumps, etc.)
– Operators for switching equipment (breakers, circuit switchers, etc.)
Battery chargers
Now let’s conduct a similar review of an auxiliary DC system. Its main components
(shown in Fig. 18) are:
Batteries
Battery chargers
Battery fuse boxes
D.C. cabinets
Cabling & wiring
Substation engineers should size all the components of both auxiliary AC and DC
systems based on analysis of all substation auxiliary loads.
Station fire
© 2012 Boris Shvartsberg 19
Alarms may be either local to alert personnel located at the substation, or remote to make
centralized operating personnel aware of abnormal conditions detected at the station.
Sensors
Visible alarms:
– Annunciators
– Lights
Audible alarms:
– Bells
– Horns
The example of a substation annunciator installed on a relay rack is shown in Fig. 19.
As mentioned above, utility centralized operational personnel are getting alerted about
abnormal conditions at the substation by remote alarm systems. But besides being aware
of things going wrong, an operator should have capabilities to obtain additional
information (system electrical quantities at the station, for example) and initiate necessary
system changes to normalize the situation (operate switching equipment, for example).
All these functions are fulfilled by remote control and operation systems whose mission
is to provide remote control, indication and metering capabilities to utility operational
personnel.
Conclusion
This course provided an overview of modern substation auxiliary and control systems,
concentrating on their major role in supporting reliable and effective operation of power
systems to enable you to:
Describe the mission of relay protection systems and criteria they need to meet
List types of relay protection schemes
Explain what breaker failure protection and reclosing are for
Identify the main components of power line carrier communication system
Understand the principle of signal transmission using fiber optic cable
Know the difference between analogue and digital types of metering equipment
Calculate a real value of electrical system parameters using readings of meters
and instruments
Know the mission and main components of auxiliary A.C. and D.C. systems
List the types of conditions triggering station alarm