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Impact of delayed fault clearance on the load in

Indian Power System

Conference Paper · December 2016

DOI: 10.1109/NPSC.2016.7858902

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 Impact of delayed fault clearance on the load in
Indian Power System
Rahul Shukla, Amandeep Singh, Chandan Kumar, N.L.Jain,S.R. Narasimhan, K.V.S. Baba
National Load Despatch Centre
Power System Operation Corporation (POSOCO)
New Delhi, India

Abstract — Induction motor loads have major participation in stalling of these motor based load [1]. This is observed as a
total load of all power grids. Induction motors are affected by the sharp change in the power system frequency observed by the
voltage observed at their node during constant torque mode. system operator. Further, as the voltage starts recovering with
During faults near to load centers, a large amount of these fault clearance, these induction motors restart and draws a
motors stall/stop as per their characteristic causing loss of large
large amount of reactive power as well as current causing
loads in the grid. Further, they also recover quickly after the
clearance of the fault by drawing large reactive power and voltage dip in the system. Such phenomenon are also called as
current from the system. This results in reduced voltage in the Fault induced delayed voltage recovery (FIDVR).
system at the node. This papers presents such case studies and its This papers discusses such cases of large load loss observed
impact on the Indian Grid.
during power system faults on transmission system located
Keywords—Induction Motor; Air-conditioning load; Indian near a load centre. Further, the challenges faced by power
Power System; Load Loss; Synchrophasor; system operator during such fault is also discussed in the
details.
I. INTRODUCTION
II. FAULT INDUCED DELAYED VOLTAGE RECOVERY
Nowadays power systems are more susceptible to voltage (FIDVR)
collapse than they were a few years ago since the grids are
getting interconnected and synchronised resulting in Fault-induced delayed voltage recovery refers to the
increasing dependence over the generation sources which are unexpected delay in the recovery of voltage to its nominal
remote to the load centres. In Indian power system all the five value following the clearing of a fault in the power system [2].
regional grids are synchronised. The Cheaper generation is This phenomenon is caused due the load characteristic in the
majorly available in Western and Eastern grid which are grid. The stalled induction motor industrial load and the
catering to the major load centres in Northern and Southern residential air conditioning (AC) unit (powered by single-
region. The primary factor that encourages utilisation of the phase induction motors) cause this phenomenon.
remote generation is the economics of purchasing bulk power
at lower cost. However, this also poses as challenge to Power
system operator in the Indian grid due to the transmission of
power over long distances and requires adequate dynamic
reactive power resource along the path. This has increased the
dependency of the system on transmission system to deliver
power directly near to the load centres. On the other hand it
also results in the huge stress on the transmission system as a
whole.
Another key factor that results in rapid voltage collapse in
the power system is the nature of the loads that are being
served by transmission system. The primary sources for
demand nowadays consist of industrial motors and single-
phase air conditioners (especially during summer seasons).
These induction motors are prone to stall when subjected to a Fig 1. Voltage variation during and after the fault in case of FIDVR event [2].
voltage dip since the supply voltage to the induction motor
Any induction motor in general runs under constant torque
decreases, the motor speed decreases. This causes a decrease
mode which depends on the system voltage [3-5]. As soon as
in power output of the motor. During the summers, air-
the voltage in system is reduced, these try to slow down and if
conditioning load comprises a high percentage of the utility
the voltage is lower for larger duration they may even stall.
load especially in Northern Region. While, in the large
However, as soon as the voltage starts recovering these
industrial areas of Western region, the industrial motors
induction motor load restart which draws the large reactive
constitute the large amount of load and are concentrated in
power and current from the system causing the voltage dip to
certain pockets. Whenever there is a phase to phase or three
sustain for larger duration and can result in tripping of further
phase type of fault near to these areas with delayed fault
load in the nearby areas [6]. Figure 1 shows the fault induced
clearance, large load loss has been observed as a part of
delayed voltage recovery phenomenon in the system.
Fig 2. Voltage and frequency during load throw off in case of faults near to Fig 3. Delayed fault clearance in Y phase.
the load centres.
Due to this fault the frequency shot up to 50.33 Hz from
Such kind of phenomenon of load throw off in the power
49.97 Hz indicating heavy load loss. The rise in frequency can
system is observed as the large shoot up in the frequency. This
be observed as in Figure 4 during this event.
sudden load throw off in the system is usually followed by
recovery of the load within 5-10 minutes. This can be very
troublesome for the system operator since quick changes in
load can cause wide variation in power flow across the
network. The typical voltage and frequency relation is shown
in figure 2. Not all such load throw off phenomenon during
stalling of induction motor results in FIDVR kind of event
however, they results in large load loss event. FIDVR event
occur when the fault is occurs during summer season when the
AC load concentration are more in the system.

In the next section detailed case studies of such event has

been discussed in detail. These events will also present the
challenges observed by system operators in detailed way
during such events.
Fig.4: Indian grid frequency during the fault indicating large load loss in the
III. CASE STUDIES system.
Several instances have been observed in Indian Grid which
In the event, the frequency returned to nominal frequency
depicts the phenomenon of fault induced load loss event.
within seven minutes indicating the quick revival of the stalled
However, only few cases of FIDVR events is observed among
Air conditioning loads and industrial load. However, in this
these events. Out of these, the faults during the summer peak
case the FIDVR was not observed in the system.
season in Northern Region of Indian grid where load loss is
observed is described in details in this section.
A. Greater Noida Event
On 31st May 2015 at 0119 hrs, 400 KV Dadri-Greater
Noida and 400 kV Greater Noida-Nawada tripped due to
damage in disc insulator of Y-phase Jack Bus of 400 kV Bus
Coupler bay at Greater Noida sub-station. Fault clearing time
was observed to be around 440 ms. Fault was in Y-Phase as
observed in Voltage of 400 kV Dadri bus measured from the
PMU at the sub-station. The fault inception and clearing time
from Dadri Bus voltage measured from PMU is shown in
figure 3.

Fig 5: Revival of load and Frequency can be observed

This change in frequency corresponds to a sudden rejection of majority of loads being in Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and Uttar
load of approximately 1700 MW in Northern Region with Pradesh. The loads however got revived within 13 minutes of
1000 MW in Delhi and rest 700 MW in Uttar Pradesh. The the incident and gave an indication that load loss was due to
load throw-off and recovery as well as frequency response is AC motor stalling. Frequency has returned to nominal value
seen in Figure 5. within 5 minutes span as can be seen in figure 7. The Figure 8
depicts the pattern of load behaviour after the tripping and it
B. 400 kV Bawana-Mundka-II tripping event can be seen that load immediately starts recovering.
On 18th May 2016 at 17:31 hrs, due to Y-B fault in 400 kV
Bawana – Mundka – 2 the same incident was observed. In this
event, the fault clearing time as observed in Dadri station
Synchrophasor plot was 400 msec. shown in figure 6. The
fault occurred in the peak hours followed by its very nearness
to the load centres which constitute majorly of Air-
conditioning loads. It can be observed that after recovery of
voltage up to 370 kV the voltage recovery is slow and later it
has exceeded the nominal voltage which was before the
incident indicating a FIDVR event.

Fig 8: Sharp Load throw-off in Northern region

C. Samaypur (BBMB) Multiple Tripping incident

Fig 6: Faults in Y & B phase as captured by Dadri PMU
The sharp frequency rise during the incident was captured by
PMU Plots of Northern region stations. A frequency rise of
0.38 Hz was observed within 20 seconds of the incident as
observed in figure 7.
On 9th June 2016 at 14:27 hrs, the initiating cause was Y-
phase CT blast of 220 kV Samaypur-Palwal-I circuit at
Samaypur (BBMB) station. It resulted in a bus fault at 220 kV
Samaypur (BBMB). Since bus bar protection at Samaypur
sub-station was out of service therefore all lines from this
substation tripped from remote ends including all four 400/220
kV ICTs of Ballabhgarh (PG). Thus, due to non-availability of
bus bar protection, the fault clearance time was nearly 1300
milliseconds (Figure 9). The FIDVR phenomenon explained
earlier in the paper can be observed in the 3-Phase voltage
plot. The delayed voltage recovery from 380 kV to 400 kV is
easily noticeable.

Fig 7: Sharp rise in frequency after the incident due to loss of load. Fig 9: Dadri station PMU Voltage plot indicating Delayed Fault clearance in
Y-Phase and later 3-Phase fault
The incident resulted in heavy load throw off in Northern
region with an approximate quantum of 3700 MW with
From the SCADA data load loss of around 3890 MW in
Northern Region has been observed and consequently, the
system frequency shot up from 49.89 Hz to 50.37 Hz as
observed in figure 10.
Fig 10: Sharp rise and recovery in system frequency
The major states where load throw off was observed were
Delhi (1450 MW), Haryana (1515 MW) and Uttar Pradesh
(1050 MW). Figure 11 indicates the sudden reduction in
demand and quantum of load loss. Again it was observed that
all loads (except Haryana) recovered with 10 minutes and the
frequency has also reached nominal value within this time. In
the case of Haryana the load could not recover since complete
outage of Samaypur station caused loss of feeders.
Fig: 11: Demand Plot of Northern Region
Thus it can be observed that out of the three cases the two
cases has shown the FIDVR event while one case was only of
fault induced load loss event. Further the recovery of loads and
changes in frequency and large loading pattern variation within
a span of 5-10 minutes can be observed. Such large
changeover in one direction and system recovering so quickly
impact the real time operation and ability of system operator to
take decision under such scenario.
IV. CONCLUSION
Fault induced load loss and fault induced delayed voltage
recovery phenomenon are now increasing day by day in the
Indian grid. Such phenomenon can be observed presently with
the fast measuring devices like Synchrophasor and can be
monitored in real time. However, decision making process for
system operator is becoming challenging during such
condition [7-8]. The large changeover in frequency followed
by quick recovery along with large change in line flow and
voltage dip can result in difficulty in making decision to bring
the system back within reliability margin.
Generally it was observed that such incidents are occurring
when the fault is multi-phase in nature and has delayed
recovery i.e. more than 100 msec for 400 kV & 160 msec for
220 kV system faults. However, cases has been observed
where load loss during fault recovery within 100 ms also has
been observed. Such load throw off creates a problem for the
system operator since the load throw-off causes the flow of
power from one region to the other to change rapidly and in
huge steps. This can potentially lead to sudden overloading of
certain lines and may also impact the voltage and angular
stability of the system. If the problem compounds further then
the system may undergo – separation/islanding and eventual
collapse.
The research is ongoing in several grids across the world in
this area. The major steps that has to be taken to reduce their
impact is to have dynamic reactive power devices, fully
redundant power system protection, under-voltage load
shedding scheme and protection on the Air-conditioning
equipment [9]. These will help in reducing the impact of such
faults near to the load centres and will help system operator in
running the grid with more reliability.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors wish to thank colleagues in their respective
organizations for the support as well as the authorities over
there to make available the relevant documents, based on
which it has been possible to prepare the paper.
REFERENCES
[1] Operational Feedback on Transmission Constraints, January 2015,
POSOCO
[2] NERC Technical Reference Paper – Fault-Induced Delayed Voltage
Recovery (FIDVR), June 2009.
[3] Andreia Leiria, Pedro Nunes, Atef Morched And M.Teresa Correia De
Barros “Induction Motor Response to Voltage Dips”
[4] J.W. Shaffer, “Air conditioner response to transmission faults,” Power
Systems, IEEE Transactions on, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 614-621, May 1997.
[5] B.R. Williams, W.R. Schmus and D.C. Dawson, “Transmission voltage
recovery delayed by stalled air conditioner compressors, Power Systems,
IEEE Transactions on, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 1173-1181, August 1992.
[6] Robles, Steven. 2014 “FIDVR Events Analysis on Valley Distribution
Circuits”. Prepared for Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory by
Southern California Edison, 2015.
[7] Robles, Steven. Commercial 3-Phase Rooftop Air Conditioner Test
Report. Prepared for Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory by
Southern California Edison, 2015
[8] Bravo, Richard J.. "Distribution FIDVR Events Analysis." In 2015
Seventh Annual IEEE Green Technologies Conference
(GreenTech)2015 Seventh Annual IEEE Green Technologies
Conference, 1-8. New Orleans, LA, USA: IEEE, 2015.
[9] Charles Mozina Consultant, Beckwith Electric Co., Inc. “Undervoltage
Load Shedding”.

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