Power System Loss Analysis

I. General An electric distribution system, or distribution plant as it is sometimes called, it all of that part of an electric power system between the bulk power source or source and the consumers' service switches. the bulk power sources are located in or near the load area to be served by the distribution system and may be either generating stations or power substations supplied over transmission lines. Distribution system can, in general, be divided in to six parts, namely, sub transmission circuits, distribution substations, distribution or primary feeders, distribution transformer, secondary circuits or secondaries, and consumers' service connections and meters or consumers' service. Figure 1 is a schematic diagram of a typical distribution system showing these parts. The subtransmission circuits extend from the bulk power source or sources to the various distributions substations located in the load area. They may be radial circuits connected to a bulk power source at only one end or loop and ring circuits connected to one or more bulk power sources at both ends. The subtransmission circuits consist of underground cable, aerial cable, or overhead open-wire conductors carried on poles, or some combination of them. The subtransmission voltage is usually between 11 and 33kV, inclusive. Each distribution substation normally serves its own load area, which is a distribution of the area served by the distribution system. At the distribution substation the subtramssion voltage is reduced for general distribution throughout the area. The substation consists of one or more power-transformers banks together with the necessary voltage regulating equipment, buses and switchgear. The area served by the distribution substation is also subdivided and each subdivision is supplied by a distribution or primary feeder. The three-phase primary feeder is usually run out from the low voltage bus of the substation to its load center where it branches into three phase subfeeders and single-phase laterals. The primary feeders and laterals may be either cable or openwire circuit, operated in most cases at 2400 or 4`160 volts. Distribution transformers are ordinarily connected to each primary feeder and its subfeeders and laterals. These transformers serve to stop down from the distribution voltage to the utilization voltage. Each transformer or bank of transformers supplies a consumer or group of connected to the secondary circuit through his service leads and meter. The secondaries and service connections may be either cable or pen-wire circuits. The distribution plant occupies an important place in any electric power system. Briefly, its function is to take electric power from the bulk power source or sources and distribute or deliver it to the consumers. The effectiveness with which a distribution system fulfills this continuity, flexibility, efficiency, and cost. The cost of distribution is an important factor in the delivered cost of electric power. Approximately 50 percent of the capital investment in electric power system in the United States is in the distribution plant. Briefly, the problem of distribution is to design, construct, operate, and maintain a distribution system that will supply adoquate electric service to the load area under consideration, both now and in the future, at the lowest possible cost. Unfortunately, no one type of distribution system can be applied economically in all load areas, because of differences in load densities, existing distribution plant, topography and other local conditions. In studying any load area, the entire distribution or delivery system from the bulk power source which may be one or more generating stations or power substations, to the consumers should be considered as a unit. This includes sustransmission distribution substations, primary feeders, distribution transformers,
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secondaries, and services. All of these part are interested and should be considered as a whole so that money saved in one part of the distribution system will not be more than offset by a resulting increase elsewhere in the system. For different load areas, or even different part of the same load area, the most effective distribution system will often take different forms. Certain principles and features, however, are common to almost of all these systems. The distribution system should provide service with a minimum voltage variation and a minimum of interruption. Service interruptions should be of short duration and effect a small number of consumer. The overall system cost including construction, operation, and maintenance of the system should be as low as possible consistent with the quality of service required in the load area. The system should be flexible, to allow its being expanded in small increments, so as to meet changing load conditions with a minimum amount of modification and expense. This flexibility permits keeping the system capacity close to actual load requirements and thus permits the most effective use of system investment. it also largely eliminates the need for predicting the location and magnitudes of future loads. Therefore, long-range distribution planning, which is at best based on scientific guesses, can be greatly reduced. II. Type of distribution systems Electric power was originally distributed by radial d-c system which later developed into the well known d-c network system. for many years this was the standard form of distribution system for the heavydensity load areas where the distribution circuits are usually underground, such as in the business sections of the larger cities. Because power could be transmitted only at the utilization voltage, the d-c system was not suitable for serving economically the more extensive lighter-load area. After the introduction of alternating current into this country by George Westinghouse, these areas were served by overhead a-c system of the radial type. The heavy-density load areas in many of the smaller cities, where it was felt that the necessity for service reliability did not warrant the expense of a d-c network system, were also fed from electric power today is distributed by a-c system still in service are gradually being replace by a-c system. The following description and discussion of distribution system are confined to alternating current systems. I.1 The Radial system The radial type of distribution system, a simple form of which is shown in figure 2 is the most common. It is used extensively to serve the light and medium density load areas where the primary and secondary circuits are usually carried overhead on poles. The distribution substation or substations can be supplied from the bulk power source over radial or loop sub-transmission circuits or over a sub-transmission grid or network. The radial system gets its name from the fact that the primary feeders radiate from the distribution substation and branch into subfeeders and laterals which extend into all parts of the area served. The distribution transformers are connected to the primary feeders, subfeeders, and laterals usually through fused cutouts, and supply the radial secondary circuits to which the consumer's service are connected. Oil circuit breakers arranged for over current tripping are used to connect the radial-primary feeders to the low voltage bus of their associated substation. When a short circuit occurs on a feeder its station breakers opens and interrupts the service to all consumers supplied by the feeder. Manually-opened sectionalizing switches are often installed at the junction of the subfeeders and the main feeder. When trouble on the subfeeder has been located the faulty section can be isolated by the opening the proper switch, and service can be restored to the remainder of the feeder before repairs are made. The purpose of the fuses in the primary leads of the distribution transformers is to open the circuit in case of trouble in a transformer or on its associated secondary lines and prevent a possible shutdown of a considerable portion of the feeder of the entire feeder on such fault. The subfeeders and laterals are sometimes fused to prevent tripping the feeder breaker at the substation and thus reduce the extent of the outage when a fault occurs on the of them. Obviously, the transformer fuses, branch fuses and feeder breaker should be
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properly coordinated so that the circuit will be opened at the proper point to keep the outage to a minimum. When a fault that is not self clearing develops on any section of the feeder, in one of its associated distribution transformers, or on one of its secondary circuits, a number of the consumers will be without service for a considerable period. All consumers connected to the feeder will of course be affected if the fault is located so as the cause the feeder breaker at the substation to open. Experience with faults on open-wire circuits has shown that de-energizing these circuits cause the fault to clear themselves in most cause. For this reason the feeder breakers are often made to reclose automatically. The reclosing equipment provides one, two, or three reclosures before the breaker is locked open. Fundamentally the advantages of the radial distribution system are simplicity and low first cost. These result from a straight forward circuit arrangement, where a single or radial path is provided from the distribution substation and sometimes from the bulk power source, to the consumer. With such a circuit arrangement the amount of switching equipment is small and the protective relaying is simple. Although simplicity and low first cost account for the widespread use of the radial system they are not present in all forms of the system. The lack of continuity of service is the principal defect of the radial system of distribution. Attempts to overcome this defect have result in many form and arrangements of the radial system. Frequently the system is radial only from the distribution substations to the distribution transformers. Because of the many system arrangement encountered it is sometimes difficult to determine in what major type a system should be classified. To aid in such classification and to follow more readily the discussion of radial systems, it should be remembered that a radial system is a system having a single path over which current may flow for a part or all of the way from the distribution or substations to the primary of any distribution transformers. Subtransmission : Power is transmitted from the bulk power source or sources to the distribution substation over the subtransmission circuits. These circuits may be simple radial circuits, parallel or loop circuits, or a number of interconnected circuits forming a subtransmission gird or network. Serveral factors influence the selection of the subtransmission arrangement for supplying distribution substation in a radial system. Two of the most important are cost and reliability of power supply to distribution substation. A radial arrangement of subtransmission circuits such as that shown in fig 3 results in the lowest first cost. This form of subtransmission is not usually employed because of the poor service reliability it provides. A fault on a radial subtransmission circuit results in a service interruption to all load fed over it. Thus a fault on a radial subtransmission circuit result in the loss of considerable load, which usually mean that a large area and many consumer are without service. An improved form of radial subtransmission is shown in fig4 each radial subtransmission circuit serve as a normal feed to certain distribution substation transformers and as an emergency feed to others. This arrangement permits quick restoration of service when a radial subtransmission circuit is faulted. The substation transformers normally fed from teh faulty circuit are each provided either manually or automatically. This arrangement does not prevent an extensive service interruption for a short time and require spare capacity to be built into the radial subtransmission circuits. Because extensive service interruptions cannot often be tolerated, the subtransmission for radial system usually takes the form of parallel or loop circuits or of a subtransmission grid. Whether a loop or a grid arrangement of subtansmission circuits is preferable will depend largely on conditions in the particular load area, such as the load distribution, the topography, and the number and location of the bulk power source. A parallel or loop circuit subtransmission layout is shown in fig 5, on which no single fault on any circuit will interrupt service to a distribution substation. All circuits must be designed to that they will not be overloaded when any one circuit is out of service. Two parallel circuits are considered to be a sectionalized loop supplying on distributions substation. However, two parallel circuit running over the same right of way are not nearly as reliable as two circuit following different routes. iA fault on one circuit may cable circuits as with open wire circuit. The term "loop" as used here should not be confused with the term "ring". By loop is meant a circuit which starts form a power supply point or bus and after running through an area returns to the same
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point or bus; where as a ring is a circuit or circuits which start from a power supply point or bus, tie together a number of power supply points or buses and return to the starting point or bus. In other words, a ring is a loop from which substation can be supplied and into when power is fed at more than one point. The ring management is quite often used for subtransmission. it is a simple from of subtransmission network, and as the system grows it very often develops into a grid. The network form of subtransmission is flexible in that it can readily be extended to supply additional distribution substation in the area it covers with a relatively small amount of new circuit construction. it requires a large number of circuit breakers, however, and is difficult and costly to relay. the network or grid form of subtransmssion shown in fig 6 provides greater service reliability to the distribution substation than the radial and loop forms of subtransmssion. This is true particularly when the distrubtion system is supplied from two or more bulk power source, because it is possible for power to flow from any bulk power source to any distribution substation. this paralleling of bulk power sources through the subtransmssion circuit also has the advantage of tending to equalize the load on the bulk power source. In a large distribution system any two or even all of the above forms of subtransmission may employed between the bulk power sources and the various distribution substation, depending upon the service requirement of the different substation and economic considerations. the form of subtransmssion empolyed is also influenced by the design of the distribution substation used. Distribution substation : twenty years ago it was common practice to use large distribution substation. The transformer capacity in many of them lay between 15000 and 30000 kva. This, of course, meant that every reasonable precaution was taken to insure continuous power supply to these stations. It also meant that system employing these large stations contained a relative small mileage of subtransmission circuits compred to the mileage of primary distributioin circuits. Except in the areas of heavy load density this meant that the load was being carried too far at the lower distribution voltage and not far enough at the higher subtransmission voltage to give an economical distribution system. The use of these large station also resulted in a system not readily adapted to changing load condition. The substation capacity could not be increased in small increments economically to take care of load growth. Also as the load grew, it often grew away from the locations where it was assumed it would grow when the large substation location were selected. This further increased the distance over which the load had to be carried at distribution voltage. Thus as time passed these system became even less economical than when first designed and installed. In order to increase the economy and flexibility of distribution system the rend during recent years has been toward the use of more and smaller distribution substations, with a resulting increase in the mileage of primary distribution circuits. Along with the change in the size of distribution substation has gone a change in the subtransmission arrangement used. This change has been a simplification of the subtransmission layout and as large a reduction in the number of high voltage circuit breakers as in consistent with service requirements. These changes have led to an increased used of the radial form of subtranmsission along with simpler loop and network forms. There is also a growing tendency to treat a subtransmsission circuit and its associated substation transformer or transformers as a unit, thus eliminating high voltage circuit breakers and doing the necessary automatic switching on the low voltage side of the substation transformer. When this is done the high voltage bus in the substation is omitted. In the larger substation however, it will at times prove economical to employ a high voltage bus and omit the low voltage bus. The economical sizes of distribution substations to employ on a particular radial system depend on load density, subtramssion arrangement, unit cost of subtransmission circuits, unit cost of primary distribution feeders, cost of land, and other factors. Because many factor influence existing distribution plant and local conditions and requirement must be taken into account, many distribution substation designs are required. Some of the more basic designs are illustrated and will be discussed briefly. Perhaps the simplest form of distribution substation is that shown in fig 7a. It consists of a high voltage disconnecting switch, a transformer bank, and a primary feeder breaker in the low voltage leads of the transformer bank. The transformer bank can consist of three single phase transformer or one three-phase
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transformer. Now that more small substation are being used the trend is definitely to the use of three phase transformer. A three phase transformer makes a neater and more compact substation, reduce the number of bushing, valves, and fittings to be inspected and maintained, and saves installation time and expense. The use of single phase transformer has the advantage of permitting open delta operation of the substation at reduced capacity, which is not possible when using a three phase transformer. Modern transformer fail so rarely, however, that this