Mal-operation Of Differential Protection Research Articles

A power transformer differential protection method based on variational mode decomposition and CNN‐BiLSTM techniques

AbstractPower transformers play a critical role in the performance of power systems. This equipment is costly due to significant copper and iron prices and manufacturing costs. Therefore, maintenance and protection of such equipment is essential. Despite its robust performance, maloperation of differential protection (DP) in transformers may cause operational challenges to power system operators. The differential relay may operate incorrectly after the transformer energization leads to an inrush current (IC) and the relay identifies the event as an internal fault, and consequently issues the trip command. The other case of maloperation includes, but not limited to, a moment when the current transformer saturates due to an external fault. In this paper, a novel approach for DP is proposed, that is based on signal processing methods. In this paper, variational mode decomposition (VMD) and the deep neural network are implemented by using the convolutional neural network (CNN) and bi‐directional long short‐term memory (BiLSTM) models. The VMD decomposes differential current signal (DCS) to intrinsic mode functions with corresponding narrow‐band property frequency spectrums, which provides more detailed information about signal characteristics in different frequency bands. At the next stage, an effective feature for the BiLSTM is extracted by the CNN with the convolutional layers to classify events and proper discrimination. Extensive simulations on a 500 MVA transformer in MATLAB demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed protection approach to differentiate ICs from internal and external faults with 99.8% accuracy in less than 1/8th of a power cycle.

Design and Evaluation of a DSP Based Differential Relay of Power Transformer

The problem of mal operation of differential protection of power transformer due to the inrush magnetizing current has long considered as a challenging problem. Several types of protection relays have been used to solve the issue (basic relay, percentage relay, multi slop ….). Each of them has its advantage and its limits. In this paper, a Digital differential relay has been developed and simulated. The logic used to distinguish between the inrush current and the internal fault is based on the theory of harmonic analysis. The behavior of the presented relay has been simulated versus various situations (inrush current, internal fault and external fault). The obtained results show that the proposed algorithm provides a good discrimination and a fast action.

The study on the Mal-operation of the transformer current differential protection during external faults cause by CT saturation

This paper analyses the unusual mal-operation of the differential protection for transformer current differential protection during the external fault. The mal-operation reason is researched in detail, based on the mathematical analysis, the simulation, and the field recorded fault data analysis. It is disclosed that the CT saturation leads to the maloperation. Based on this, this paper analyses the improvement for the CT saturation identification method, and discusses the CT selection principles. This paper is aimed at attracting the attention on the problem of the CT saturation and proposing the reference of the analysis method the countermeasure for this problem.

Impact of plant outage on ferroresonance and maloperation of differential protection in the presence of SVC in electrical network

Ferroresonance is phenomena, which emerged in case of different circumstances such as short circuit and breaker phase failure. In addition, plant outage is another cause of ferroresonance. Ferroresonance may cause maloperation of some protective devices such as differential protection. In this study, Manitoba hydro network is analysed in power systems computer-aided design/electro-magnetic transient design and control to recognise ferroresonant configurations in case of plant outage. Impact of ferroresonance on maloperation of differential protection is analysed. A static var compensator (SVC) is installed at the mid-point of the network to mitigate ferroresonance. Operation of relay is assessed in the presence of SVC; furthermore, effect of parameters and components of SVC on operation of differential protection is investigated. Then, an adaptive algorithm is designed in differential relay to recognise ferroresonance and prevent maloperation of the relay.

Adaptive CWT‐based transmission line differential protection scheme considering cross‐country faults and CT saturation

In this study a new adaptive continuous wavelet transform (CWT)-based current differential protection scheme is proposed to cope with problems of conventional current differential protection in transmission lines. Current transformer (CT) saturation is a major problem for protection engineers in current differential protection systems. The mentioned problem is highlighted when an external fault occurs and causes mal-operation of differential protection. In this study, three phase currents at both ends of transmission line have been sampled and used as input signals to the proposed method using appropriate communication link. In addition, CWT with the aid of Mexican hat as a mother wavelet has been employed to extract high-frequency information of signals and detect fault occurrence and CT saturation in each phase. As a result, the proposed technique is able to prevent unwanted trip due to CT saturation during external faults. Nevertheless, simulation results confirm sensitivity and security of the proposed protection technique in facing with second internal fault of cross-country faults after a short delay.

The effect of transformer non-synchronous energization on differential protection and its countermeasure

If the wye-delta connected three-phase transformer energizes non-synchronously, the first energized phase will induce an electromotive force into the other two phases via delta winding. Then, the flux in transformer core maybe increasing greatly and causes severe saturation. The second harmonic ratio (SHR) of the three-phase differential currents in such a case is small, which can cause the conventional second harmonic restraint principle failure and the mal-operation of differential protection. In this paper, the mechanism of non-synchronous energization (NSE) is firstly introduced. Then, a novel method for detecting the NSE of unloaded transformer is proposed. If the change of neutral current does not coincide with the line currents of transformer, the NSE can be identified. To avoid the mal-operation of the transformer differential protection due to the inrush currents occurred during the NSE, a new method, taking advantage of the changing trend of the SHR in the differential currents, is also put forward to discriminate inrush current from fault current during NSE. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme has been verified by simulation results. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

New Method to Identify Sympathetic Inrush in Transformer Based on Hilbert Huang Transform

Sympathetic inrush may cause the mal-operation of differential protection. Aiming at this problem, based on the characteristic that sympathetic inrush contains a lot of aperiodic component and high harmonics, this paper proposes to use Hilbert Huang transform to identify sympathetic inrush. Firstly, the mathematical model of sympathetic inrush is established to analyze its characteristic. Then Hilbert transform is used to obtain harmonic contents of sympathetic inrush and internal fault current. According to the proportion of fundamental to current, sympathetic current can be identified and differential protection can be blocked. The simulation results show that this method has better reliability and sensitivity than the second harmonic restraint scheme. Besides, it has a good ability against TA saturation.