Computer relaying for EHV/UHV transmission lines

As the power systems grow, system connections become more complex. Due to cost and environmental concern, more and more parallel lines and series compensated lines may be installed in the system. In order to efficiently use the transmission network, more nonlinear flexible devices such as the phase shifter and the advanced compensation system will be put into use. Once a fault occurs on such a system, a delay in clearing the fault is usually not permissive. This requires a new generation of relays which have high security and dependability and high operating speed. With the advent of high speed microprocessor and fiber optic communication technologies, it is possible to develop high performance relays. In this dissertation, a new generation of pilot relays and non-pilot relays were developed for a transmission line.

The pilot relays include the instantaneous percentage current differential (IPD), the phase comparison and the phasor based percentage current differential (PPD) principles. In the pilot protections the synchronized phasor measurement techniques are employed and digital CT saturation detectors are incorporated. All these schemes in primary protections feature charging current (or shunt current ) compensation. The phasor based principles are designed to work within one and a half cycles; while others based on sample by sample comparison are assumed to work in less than a cycle.

The non-pilot relays to be investigated in this dissertation include the fault location based and phase angle based directional distance relays. One cycle data window is used in the phasor calculation. Both the distance relays are assumed to make a trip decision in about one and a half cycles.

All algorithms were simulated against different fault conditions using EMTP outputs. The simulation results show all the pilot relay algorithms work well for EHV IUHV transmission lines including the series compensated lines. The fault location based distance relay works well in most cases, but it may give a wrong decision for the close-in fault with the fault resistance and may have a singularity problem. The phase angle based distance relay works very well for different fault conditions and is insensitive to fault resistance.

The modified phase angle based distance relay was also developed for the series compensated line. It would not lose the direction for faults with or without fault resistance, either for a compensated system in forward direction, or in an adjacent line in reverse direction. The overreach is within 20% of the protected zone. This relay algorithm is also based on the one-cycle data window DFT, and it can give a reliable trip decision in about two cycles.

All pilot relays with a fiber optic link and the phase angle based distance relay can constitute a new generation of protection systems for EHV IUHV transmission lines.