High Impedance, Merz-Price, Circulating Current Differential - Applicatio...

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High Impedance, Merz-Price, Circulating Current

Created by Rodney Hughes, last modified on 15 Mar 2015
Differential
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Differential relays use the principle that when there is no fault within the zone defined by
the CT locations, the currents from each of the CTs are all balanced and hence circulate
around the parallel connected CTs. Although the relay is in parallel to the CTs, its
relatively higher impedance than the CT paths and the balanced current flow on the
secondary currents from all the CTs means there is minimal operating current through
the relay and hence it should not operate.
High impedance differential protection effectively responds to a voltage across the relay
connection, which in turn leads to sufficient operating current in the relay to operate.
Hence the relay setting may be in terms of voltage or the current sensitivity.

The figure below shows the simplified arrangement for no fault inside the zone of the bus
bar protection scheme. In this example the CT on the right hand side has saturated due
to high current in one circuit but the scheme must remain stable and not operate as there
is no internal fault. In this circumstance the saturated CT effectively is seen as a short
circuit and has zero output voltage and hence does not produce any output current itself.
The left hand CTs therefore have to produce sufficient voltage to drive the circulating
current through the saturated CT on the right. Consequently there is a voltage profile on
the secondary circuit from left to right resulting in a voltage appearing across the relay
connection. Provided this produced relay voltage is less than the operating threshold of
the relay, the scheme will be stable.
The relays may be inherently voltage setting based relays with the advantage of a
natural high impedance with the resultant low operating current sensitivity typically less
than 30milliamps on the secondary side. Alternatively, current setting based relays with
higher operating current can be used with external resistors to create the high
impedance arrangement with the resistor calculated to give the required voltage
threshold at the setting current. Current setting based schemes have the possibility that
the operating current can be set above the maximum load current of a single circuit in
order to avoid mal-operation in the case of a CT open circuit which would otherwise
cause operation due to the apparent differential current.

(click to enlarge)

Principle of voltage setting to cater for saturated CT during external

fault/through current i.e. no internal fault:

The minimum CT knee point voltage is given by applying Ohm's Law

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Extra Notes:

Vk If . 2. (Rct + Rl)

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Vk is the minimum knee point voltage

Focus Applications
If is maximum fault current (including for high Source Impedance Ratios)
Rct is the CT winding resistance
Rl is the loop impedance from the CT to the relay (i.e. twice the individual lead
burden)

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All CTs in a differential scheme must meet all four of the following criteria. They must
have:
1.
2.
3.
4.

well-matched excitation characteristics,

the same turns ratio,
low secondary winding impedance,
low excitation current.

This is why differential relays require PX class CTs in order define the physical
construction of the CTs, rather than the connected burden defined by class P CTs as
discussed here:. PX or P class CT choice

When an internal fault occurs on the bus bar, the sum of the currents flowing in do not
equal the sum of the currents flowing out. This is reflected on the secondary circuit at
the connection point of the relay. Using Kirchhoffs Law, it is clear that the differential
current, representing the primary fault current, must flow through the relay path.

The relay pick-up voltage must be less than half of the knee-point voltage of the current
transformers to ensure reliable operation for internal faults as well as catering for the
simplified analysis of the relay being located at the electrical midpoint of the CT wiring
where the voltage across the relay is half the voltage developed by the CT when another
CT is saturated. In some cases this results in CTs with several kV knee point voltages
and hence non-linear resistors are required to limit the over-voltages that are
experienced during internal faults to less than 2 kV peak, which is the standard insulation
level used for secondary equipment and wiring.
Vs Vk / 2

Vs is the relay setting voltage

Vk is the CT knee point voltage

The protection sensitivity corresponds to the sum of the magnetising currents of all
parallel connected current transformers plus the relay current at the relay pick-up
voltage given by the formula:
Io = Is + n.Ie

Io is the effective operating current sensitivity

Is is the pick up current of the relay
n is the number of CT cores in parallel
Ie is the CT excitation current

Typically, as internal faults will result in CT saturation due to the high relay burden, the
operating time for a high impedance differential relay must be less than 1 cycle prior to
saturation making it a very effective protection system easily graded with remote line
protections seeing into the substation.

Internal fault waveform and tripping

Consider a system with

Vkp >= 400 V
Vs >= 200 V

If we have a current operated relay with current setting Is = 0.1 A, then we need the
total impedance of the relay path to be:
Rtot >= 200 V / 0.1 A = 2000 ohms

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For an internal fault with Ifmax = 20 A, the theoretical voltage to be developed by the CT
Focus Applications
to avoid CT saturation would be
Vunsat = Ifmax (Rct + Rloop + 2000 ohms)
so it is clear Vunsat > 40 kV !!!

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Or if we have a voltage operated relay with a current sensitivity Is = 0.02 A then the
equivalent total impedance of that relay is
Rtot = 200 V / 0.02 A = 10k ohms
And hence fo ran internal fault the theoretical unsaturated voltage would be
Vunsat = Ifmax (Rct + Rloop + 10000 ohms) >= 200 kV !!!!!!!
Clearly neither of those voltages are able to be developed by the CT and HEAVY
saturation occurs very early in the CT waveform.

The result is this classic "shark fin" waveform /|____ which then repeats in the negative
half cycle.

Blue line is expected unsaturated output,

Black line is saturated output due to excessive burden
(based on IEEE tool: http://www.pes-psrc.org/Reports/CT_SAT%2010-01-03.zip )

Clearly as an internal fault, we need the HiZ differential relays to be able to work with
these heavily saturated waveforms.

Some specifically designed electromechanical relays have proven over many decades
that they will work satisfactorily and achieve ~ 20 ms operating time under these
conditions because electromechanical relays basically work on the amount of energy
that can be pumped into the armature. Hence these relays work very well applying the
standard requirement:
Vk If . 2. (Rct + Rl)

However electronic relays work on exceeding thresholds of current measurements

typically with some sort of signal processing filters such as Fourier Transforms to identify
the 50 Hz or 60 Hz component. Clearly the 50 Hz component of the shark fin /|____ is
much less that the anticipated peak 50 Hz or 60 Hz of the fault current and hence heavy
saturation may lead to the relay not operating at all, or perhaps very slowly as the relay
has to wait for the waveform to come out of saturation.
This means that the electronic relays will most likely need CTs that are MUCH larger
than the requirement for electromechanical relays so the formula becomes
Vk k x If . (Rct + Rl)

As indicated by one manufacturer of an electronic relay, if k = 2 (as per

electromechanical relays) the operating time may be degraded as much as ~100 ms

but if you wish to retain the same ~20 ms as per the electromechanical relays you need
k = 16, i.e. CTs which are 8 x larger than equivalent electromechanical relays

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Focus Applications

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(click to expand)

Hence be very careful of selecting electronic relays that you have correctly assessed the
operating time vs kneepoint voltage requirements.
Certainly modern numerical relays offer benefits of waveform capture for internal faults
(it would be very useful to prove the saturated waveform characteristic but note that is
not the actual primary fault current waveform), and of course direct LAN
communications, perhaps even integration in IEC 61850 systems.
However it may be more prudent to retain the electromechanical relay performance with
lower kneepoint voltage requirements and simply use a generic I/O device as indicated
in the third diagram here CB Interface, Relay Contact Interface . The I/O device would
ideally be able to have its generic GGIO input/output Logical Node renamed as PDIF to
provide its relevant semantic in the IEC 61850 SCL files.

The need for Metrosils

As a result of the HiZ path, certainly there will be potential for high voltage spikes which
may exceed the insulation rating of the wiring and relay - much more likely with voltage
operated relays with extremely low current sensitivity. Hence there may be a need for
voltage limiting Metrosils ( http://www.metrosil.com/ )to be added in parallel to the relay
path. Calculations should be done to check the requirement in each case.

Parallel De-sensitising Resistors

Some applications have employed the use of a resistor in parallel to the high impedance
relay circuit in order to desensitise the minimum fault current to operate the high
impedance relays. This may be useful to ensure that the minimum fault sensitivity is
above the normal current of a single circuit to prevent mal-operation due to an open
circuit CT. However the effect of this is to make the scheme a medium or low
impedance scheme with the associated stability issues. In these cases, the secondary
current flows during external faults with one CT saturated must be considered, i.e. the
high impedance relay path is to aid in making all the circulating current flow through the
saturated CT, rather than the relay.

CT Switching

One of the typical application difficulties of high impedance schemes is on complex bus
bar arrangements, such as double bus arrangements, where the CTs connected to the
protection zone must be changed to reflect different bus bar configurations. In these
circumstances, the CT circuits must be reconnected dynamically as the isolators
positions are changed. This is achieved by auxiliary contacts on the isolators which
change the CT connections to different bus bar protection zones. This introduces a risk
of maloperation of the auxiliary contacts leading to open circuit CTs with the risk of CT
explosion and/or incorrect operation of the bus bar protection under healthy conditions.
Given the high speed operation of bus bar protection relays, consideration must also be
given to the intermediary arrangement where the CTs are connected to two zone
simultaneously as the isolator changes position and the CT circuits move through a
make-before-break sequence. Hence in these arrangements it is usual to also use
some form of CT supervision to detect and guard against inadvertent CT open circuits.

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Check Zones
Focus Applications

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Given the need to avoid maloperation of bus bar protection and the heavy reliance on CT
performance and connections, complex substations with multiple bus bar protection
zones often also employ a fixed check zone across the complete substation where the
CTs do not need to be switched. This operates in conjunction with the individual zones in
a two out of two tripping requirement to ensure there is a true internal fault prior to
tripping the circuit breakers. However this adds the requirement for additional dedicated
CT cores for each of the X and Y check schemes.
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