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IEEE TUTORIAL ON
VOLTAGE SAG
ANALYSIS
•
IEEE
IEEE TUTORIAL ON
VOLTAGE SAG ANALYSIS
The material presented in this tutorial is an excerpt from the manuscript of my book "Understanding
power quality problems: voltage sags and interruptions", published by IEEE Press in New York. ISBN
0-7803-4713-7.
IEEE Press publications are available from
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1
Table of Contents
2
1. Voltage Sag Characterisation
1. INTRODUCTION
"
c-
S
]0.6
~
'"
co
EO.4
'"
co
~
(J)
3 dislributiol1
~: lowvol~e T C 10 20 30
Dislanoeto the fault in kin
40 50
7 S
Fig. 5. Sag magnitude as a function of the distance to
the fault , for faults on an 11 kV , 150 mm2 overhead
Fig. 3 . Distribution network with load positions and line.
fault positions.
The sag magnitude as a function of the distance to
the fault has been calculated for a typical llkV over-
head. line resulting in Fig. 5 . For the calculations a
150 ~ overhead line was used [5] and fault levels of
v.. 750 MVA, 200 MVA and 75 MVA. The fault level is used
to calculate the source impedance at the pee, the feeder
E
impedance to calculate the impedance between the pce
and the fault. It was assumed that the source impedance
is purely reactive, thus Zs = ;0.161 n for the 750 MVA
source. The impedance of the 150 mm2 overhead line is
t---.load
0.117+ ;0.315n per km.
As expected the sag magnitude increases (i.e. the sag
becomes less severe) for increasing distance to the fault
and for increasing fault level. We also see that faults at
tens of kilometres distance can still cause a severe sag.
Fig. 4. Voltage divider model for a voltage sag. A . Faults behind Transformers
0.1 s I~ DUl'lLtion
5
--• • •
Fig. 7. Sags of different origin in a magnitude-duration Fig. 8. Estimation of sag duration by power quality
plot . monitor for a two-cycle sag : overestimation by one
cycle (upper graph); correct estimation (lower graph).
system faults lead to shorter duration sags than distribu-
tion system faults and that they cover the whole range the most likely situation. We see that the rms value is low
of sag magnitude. Current-limiting fuses allow very short for three samples in a row. The sag duration according to
fault-clearing times, they are only found in low-voltage the monitor will be three cycles. Here it is assumed that
and distribution systems. In a magnitude versus dura- the sag is deep enough for the intermediate rms value to be
tion plot we can now distinguish a number of areas. This below the threshold. For shallow sags both intermediate
is shown in Fig. 7 . The numbers in refer to the following values might be above the threshold and the monitor will
sag origins: record a one-cycle sag. The bottom curve of Fig. 8
1. Transmission system faults shows the rare situation where the sag commencement
2. Remote distribution system faults almost coincides with one of the instants on which the
3. Local distribution system faults rIDS voltage is calculated. In that case the monitor gives
V. THREE-PHASE UNBALANCE.
TT
Vb =J ~ v'3Va
• -
(8)
- Vb
For each type of fault, expressions can be derived for
TT
Vc =J Vav'3
•
Fig. 10. Phase-to-ground (left) and phase-to-phase Fig. 11. Phase-to-ground and phase-to-phase voltages
voltages before and during a phase-to-ground fault. before and during a phase-to-phase fault.
has the tendency to increase because the zero-sequence load the maximum drop is 50%, for V = O. But for the
fault impedance is larger than the positive-sequence fault delta-connected load one phase could drop all the way
impedance. We can obtain expression (7) by adding a down to zero. The conclusion that load could therefore
zero-sequence component to the voltages. As the zero- best be connected in star is wrong however. Most sags do
sequence voltage does Dot propagate to the equipment not originate at the same voltage level as the equipment
terminals, this does not affect the voltages at the equip- terminals. We will see later that the sag at the equipment
ment terminals. terminals could be either of the two shown in Fig. 11 ,
depending on the transformer winding connections.
B. Phase-to-Phase Faults
c. Transformer Winding Connections
For a phase-to-phase fault the voltages in the two faulted
phases move towards each other. The expressions for the Transformers come with many different winding con-
phase-to-neutral voltages during a phase-to-phase. fault nections, but when studying the transfer of voltage sags
read as follows: from one voltage level to another, only three types need
to be considered:
~ =-~v + ~jv'S
transformer. Also the delta-zigzag (Dz) transformer
fits into this category.
The corresponding phasor diagrams are shown in Fig. 3. Transformers that swap line and phase voltages.
11 . Due to a phase-to-phase fault a star-connected load For these transformers each secondary-side voltage
experiences a drop in two phases, a delta-connected load
experiences a drop in three phases. For the star-connected
equals the difference between two primary-side volt- • single-phase fault, star-conn load, no transf.
ages. Examples are the delta-star (Dy) and the star- This case has been discussed before, resulting in
delta (Yd) transformer as well as the star-zigzag equation (7) and in the left diagram in Fig. 10
(Yz) transformer We will refer to this sag as sag Xl. Transformer
type 1 gives the same results of course.
Within each of these three categories there will be trans-
formers with different clock number (e.g. Ydl and Yd11), • single-phase fault, delta-conn load, no transf.
thus causing a different phase shift between primary and The voltage sag for this case is given in equation
secondary-side voltages. But this difference is not of any (9) and shown in the right diagram in Fig. 10.
importance for the voltage sags as experienced by the This sag will be referred to as sag X2.
equipment. All that matters is the change between the
pre-fault voltages and the during-fault voltages, in mag- • single-phase fault, star-connected load, transf T2.
nitude and in phase-angle. The whole phasor diagram, Transformer type 2 removes the zero sequence com-
with pre-fault and during-fault phasors, can be rotated ponent of the voltage. The zero sequence compo-
without any influence on the equipment. Such a rotation nent of the phase voltages due to a single-phase fault
can be seen as a shift in the zero point on the time axis is found from (7) to be equal to i(V - 1). This
which of course has no influence on equipment behaviour. gives the following expression for the voltages:
The three transformer types can be defined mathemati-
cally by means of the following transformation matrices:
(15)
(12)
T2 = ~
2 -1
-1
[ -1
2-1
-1] (13)
This looks like a new type of sag, but we will later
see that it is identical to the one experienced by a
delta connected load during a phase-to-phase fault.
-1 2
But for now it will be referred to as sag X3.
10 20 30 40 50
Distance to the fault in Ian
5 10 15 20 25
Distanc:eto the fault in Ian
ll~ = arg (V...g) (19)
Fig. 14. Phase-angle jump versus distance, for over-
~.30 one.
cu
c» Based on the classification of three-phase unbalanced
~-40
s:
no
sags we distinguish between three different kinds of mag-
-50 nitude and phase-angle jump. In all cases magnitude and
-60 phase-angle jump are absolute value and argument re-
0 2 3 4 5 6 spectively of a complex voltage.
Tune in cycles
Fig. 16. Phase-angle jump versus time for the voltage • The initial complex voltage is the voltage at the
sag in Fig. 1 . point-of-common coupling at the faulted voltage level.
For a single-phase-to-ground fault the initial com-
B. Phase-Angle Jump - Monitoring plex voltage is the voltage between the faulted phase
and ground at the pee. For a phase-to-phase fault
To obtain the phase-angle jump of a measured sag, the the initial complex voltage is the voltage between
phase-angle of the voltage during the sag must be com- the two faulted phases. For a two-phase-to-ground
pared with the phase-angle of the voltage before the sag. or a three-phase fault it can be either the voltage
The phase angle of the voltage can be obtained from the in one of the faulted phases or between two faulted
voltage zero-crossing or from the phase of the fundamental phases (as long as pu values are used). The initial
component of the voltage. Fig. 16 shows the phase of the sag magnitude is the absolute value of the complex
fundamental component of the voltage before and during initial voltage; the initial phase-angle jump is the
the sag shown in Fig. 1 . The complex fundamental com- argument of the complex initial voltage.
ponent was obtained from a fast-Fourier transform. Let
4J(t) be the argument of the complex fundamental voltage • The characteristic complex voltage of a three-phase
over the period [t - T, t] with T one cycle of the fun- unbalanced sag is defined as the value of V in Ta-
damental frequency, and </Jo the argument at t=O. The ble II. We will give an alternative interpretation
synchronous voltage has an angle ~o + wt with Wo the of the characteristic complex voltage later on. The
angular speed of the fundamental frequency. The phase- characteristic sag magnitude is the absolute value of
angle jump at/> as plotted in Fig. 16 can be calculated the characteristic complex voltage. The character-
from: istic phase-angle jump is the argument of the char-
a</J =¢(t) - (<Po + wt) (21) acteristic complex voltage. These can be viewed
as generalised definitions of magnitude and phase-
Like with sag magnitude, there is no unique value for angle jumps for three-phase unbalanced sags.
the phase-angle jump due to a sag. A power quality moni-
tor should use an average value during a sag or the largest • The complex voltages at the equipment terminals
value during the sag. The oscillation of the phase-angle are the values of ~, li and ~ in Table II and in
around sag initiation and voltage recovery are due to the several of the equations around these tables. The
shift of the window in and out of the sag. It takes about sag magnitude and phase-angle jump at the equip-
one cycle before the phase-angle jump reaches a reliable ment terminals are absolute value and argument
value. This could lead to erroneous values of the phase- respectively of the complex voltages at the equip-
angle jump when obtained by a power-quality monitor. ment terminals. For single-phase equipment these
are simply sag magnitude and phase-angle jump as
VII. MAGNITUDE AND PHASE-ANGLE JUMPS FOR previously defined for single-phase voltage sags.
THREE-PHASE UNBALANCED SAGS
B. How to Obtain Characteristic Magnitude
A. Definition of Magnitude and Phase-Angle Jump
Before, we have introduced three types of sags together
The magnitude of a voltage sag was defined as the with their characteristic complex voltage V. A mathemat-
rms value of the voltage during the fault. For single- ically elegant method to obtain the characteristic complex
phase loads this is an implementable definition, despite voltage from the sampled voltages, is described in [10, 9].
the problems with actually obtaining the rms value. For Here we will give a simple method for obtaining the sag
1 .4,r----~-~-- -~
magnitude. For type D the magnitude is the rms value of
the lowest of the three voltages. For type C it is the rms 1.2
value of the difference between the two lowest voltages
(in pu). For type A, either definition holds. This leads to
:>
the following way of determining the characteristic mag- Co
s°.8
nitude of a three-phase sag from the voltages measured CI>
Vo(t) = Ve(t) + Vo(t) + ~(t) (22) Fig. 17. RMS values of the pha.se-to-ground voltages
3
for the sag shown in Fig. 1 .
• determine the remaining voltages after subtracting
the zero sequence voltage:
""
J!!
'0
• determine the rms values of the voltages V;, V; and >0.4
V;. 0.2
This procedure has been applied to the voltage sag VIII. REFERENCES
shown in Fig. 1. At first the rms values have been
determined for the three measured phase-to-ground volt- [1] The Excel file contaiDing these measwements was
ages, resulting in Fig. 17 . The rms value has been obtained from a web-site with test data set up
R.L. Morgan for IEEE project group P1159.2, with
determined each half cycle over the preceding 128 sam-
the aim of testing methods of sag characterization.
ples (one half-cycle). We see the behaviour typical for a
http://stdsbbs.ieee.org/groups/
single-phase fault on an overhead feeder: a drop in voltage
in one phase and a rise in voltage in the two remaining [2] IEEE Recommended Practice for monitoring electric
voltages. power quality, IEEE Std. 1159-1995. New York: IEEE,
After subtraction of the zero-sequence component, all 1995.
three voltages show a drop in magnitude. This is shown in [3] Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC). Part 2: Environ-
Fig. 18 . The phase-to-ground voltages minus the zero- ment . Section 2: Compatibility levels for low-frequency
sequence are indicated through solid lines, the phase-to- conducted disturbances and signalljng in public low-
phase voltages through dotted lines. The lowest rms value voltage power supply systems. IEC Std.61QOO.2-2. lEe
standards can be obtained from IEC, P.O. Box 131, 1211
Geneva, Switzerland.
I. VOLTAGE TOLERANCE
A. Voltage..Tolerance Curves
ers. Other equipment can withstand a supply interruption Oms 2SOms 7SOms
DlJl"atiOJl
much longer, like a lap-top computer, which is designed to
withstand (intentional) power interruptions. But even a
lap-top computer's battery only contains enough energy Fig. 1. Voltage-tolerance requirement for power sta-
for typically a few hours. For each piece of equipment tions in Sweden, data obtained from [1].
it is possible to determine how long it will continue to
operate after the supply becomes interrupted. A rather that voltage sags and their resulting tripping of main-
simple test would give the answer. The same test can be frame computers could be a greater threat than complete
done for a voltage of 10% (of nominal), for a voltage of interruptions of the supply. He therefore contacted some
20%, etc. If the voltage becomes high enough, the equip- manufacturers for their design criteria and performed some
ment will be able to operate on it indefinitely. Connecting tests himself. The resulting voltage-tolerance curve be-
the points obtained by performing these tests, results in came known as the "CBEMA curve" several years later.
the so-called "voltage-tolerance curve". An example of
a voltage-tolerance curve is shown in Fig. 1 . Strictly B. Ezamples of Voltage Tolerance
speaking one can claim that this is not a voltage-tolerance
curve, but a requirement for the voltage tolerance; in this An overview of the voltage tolerance of currently avail-
case the voltage tolerance of power stations connected to able equipment is presented in Table I . With these data,
the Swedish National Grid. One could refer to this as a as well as with the voltage-tolerance data presented in the
voltage-tolerance requirement and to the result of equip- rest of this chapter, one should realise that the values not
ment tests as a voltage-tolerance performance. We will necessarily apply to a specific piece of equipment. As an
refer to both the measured curve as well as the required example, Table I gives for motor starters a voltage tol-
curve, as a voltage-tolerance curve. It will be clear from erance between 20 ms, 60% and 80 ~,40%. U$lg this
the context whether one refers to the voltage-tolerance re- range to design an installation could be rather dangerous;
quirement or the voltage-tolerance performance. We see using the average value even more. These values are only
in Fig. 1 that a Swedish power station has to withstand a meant to give the reader an impression of the sensitivity
voltage sag down to 25% of nominal for 250 milliseconds, of equipment to voltage sags, not to serve as a database
and that the power station should be able to operate nor- for those designing installations. For the time being it is
mally for any voltage of 95% or higher [1]. still necessary to determine the voltage tolerance of each
The concept of voltage-tolerance curve was introduced critical part of an installation or to subject the whole
in 1978 by Thomas Key [2]. When studying the reliability installation to a test. In future, voltage-tolerance require-
of the power supply to military installations, he realised ments might make the job easier. These requirements can
either be set by standards-setting bodies, similar to the
lEe standards for harmonic currents, or be part of indus- • Generate the sag by using a wave-form generator in
try guidelines. The former appears to be the lEe road, cascade with a power amplifier.
where the latter is the way in which the IEEE and NEMA
are moving. Both methods are only aimed at testing one piece of
The values in Table I should be read as follows. A equipment at a time. To make a whole installation tol-
voltage tolerance of (a ms, b%) implies that the equipment erate a certain voltage sag, each piece needs to be tested
can tolerate a zero voltage of a ms and a voltage of b% hoping that their interconnection does not cause any un-
of nominal indefinitely. Any sag longer than a ms and expected deterioration in performance. A method for
deeper than b% will lead to tripping or mal-function of testing a whole installation is presented in [5]. A three-
the equipment. In other words: the equipment voltage- phase diesel generator is used to power the installation
tolerance curve is rectangular with a "knee" at (a ms, under test. A voltage sag is made by reducing the field
b%). voltage. It takes about two cycles for the ac voltage to
drop after a drop in field voltage, so that this method can
c. Voltage- Tolerance Tests only be used for sags of 5 cycles and longer. For equip-
ment testing this is no serious limitation.
The only standard that describes how to obtain voltage
tolerance of equipment is IEC 61000-4-11 [4]. This stan- II. COMPUTERS AND CONSUMER ELECTRONICS
dard does however not mention the term voltage-tolerance
curve. Instead it defines a number of preferred magni- The power supply of a computer, and of most consumer-
tudes and durations of sags for which the equipment has electronics equipment normally consists of a diode recti-
to be tested. (Note: The standard uses the term "test fier followed by some kind of electronic voltage regulator.
levels" , which refers to the remaining voltage during the The power supply of all these low-power electronic devices
sag. ) The equipment does not need to be tested for all is similar and so is their sensitivity to voltage sags. What
these values, but one or more of the magnitudes and du- is different are the consequences of a sag-induced trip. A
rations may be chosen. The preferred magnitudes and television will show a black screen for up to a few seconds;
duration are shown in Table II . The lEe standard also a compact disc player will reset itself and start from the
allows the choice of one sag duration outside of the list of beginning of the disc, or just wait for a new command.
preferred durations. But the trip of the process-control computer of a chemical
plant leads to a complete restart of the plant taking up to
TABLE II several days, plus sometimes a very dangerous situation.
PREFERRED MAGNITUDES AND DURATION FOR EQUIP-
MENT IMMUNITY TESTING ACCORDING TO IEC-6100o-
A. Estimation of Computer Voltage Tolerance
4-11 [4].
(1)
I ~ , ~ ~
v=JVl-2%t (2)
:' ,: ': ,:
0.8 :: : ~ :: : ~ The moment the de bus voltage drops below the abso-
,'.,1, "
,"1'1" lute value of the ac voltage, the normal operation mode
,'", ",
,"1'1 11
G)O.6,:::: ::: of the rectifier takes over and the de bus voltage remains
~ :::::::: 'I"". " constant, apart from the unavoidable de voltage ripple.
l5 :: :1 .: :;1 :. ,~ :: :: ': :: ::
> 0.4 :: :: :: :: ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ ~ : : I : ' :::::::;::
From (2) we ean calculate how long it takes for the de
::" ::" ::I' :::::::::,: 'f: : , :::::: :: :' ::
."1"" 'I 1,'"",1,1, " " fl " "
bus voltage to decay to its new steady-state value. But
~ ~ ~ :::: :: :' ~, :: :: .: :: :: :: ~ ~ : :: :: first we obtain an expression for the de voltage ripple e:
0.2 ~ ~ : :: :: :: :: :: :: :; :: :: :: J : : ~ ~ ~
,\
i
,\ ,,
, •
~\
,
""
•
II•
t
~
,I
\
••
t
..,
•
'•
•
"~
\
"'I
,
"..
•
••
t ,
•• ••
I
,,
f
l
o I •• " r .' \ f , •• ••
PT
o 2 4 6
Tme in cycles
8 10
e = 2V02C (3)
Fig. 3. Effect of a voltage sag on de bus voltage for a with T one cycle of the fundamental frequency. The de
single-phase rectifier: absolute value of the ae voltage
(dashed line) and de bus voltage (solid line).
ripple is defined as the difference between the maximum
and the minimum value of the de voltage. The discharge
period of the capacitor is assumed to be equal to one half-
cycle.
Inserting the expression for the de voltage ripple (3)
in (2) gives an expression for the dc voltage during the
discharge period, thus during the initial cycles of a voltage
sag:
4:
with the number of cycles elapsed since sag initiation.
The larger the de voltage ripple in normal operation, the
faster the de voltage drops during a sag .
As long as the de bus voltage remains above the mini-
mum operating voltage of the voltage regulator, the com-
puter will continue to operate normally. But when the de
bus voltage drops below this value, the computer will trip
or maloperate.
The de bus voltage at which the equipment actually
trips depends on its design: varying between 50% and
90% de voltage, sometimes with add itional time delay.
The time it takes for the voltage to reach a level V can
be found from the following expression: Fig. 4. Voltage-tolerance curve of a computer: an ex-
ample of a rectangular voltage-tolerance curve.
1- (~)2
t= 0 T (5)
4£
When the minimum de bus voltage, is known , (5) can
be used to calculate how long it will take before tripping.
Or in other words: what ds the maximum sag duration
that the equipment can tolerate. Table III gives some
values of voltage tolerance, calculated this way.
TABLE III
VOLTAGE TOLERANCE OF COMPUTERS AND CONSUMER-
ELECTRONICS EQUIPMENT .
I OO ~------ --:
0 5 cycles 25 cycles
eo
,/ r-----------...
; Inc
. --~ ---.--~
50% 4 cycles 19 cycles : , -,'
~/
70% 2.5 cycles 13 cycles
90% 1 cycle 5 cycles
A
..
i •
•
J :0
I 0
! 0
! :
0
Fig. 8 . Voltage during a three-phase unbalanced sag of Fig. 9. Voltage during a three-phase unbalanced sag of
type C : ac side voltage (top) and dc side voltages (bot- type D: ac side voltage (top) and dc side voltages (bot-
tom) for large capacitance (solid line), small capaci- tom) for large capacitance (solid line), small capaci-
tance (dashed line) and no capacitance (dotted line) . tance (dashed line) and no capacitance (dotted line).
• Small capacitor: initial rate of decay of the voltage For a sag of type D, all three phases drop in voltage,
is 75% per cycle. For a 620 V drive this corresponds thus there is no longer a phase that can keep up the de
to 57.8 pFJkW. bus voltage. Fortunately the drop in voltage is moderate
for two of the three phases. Even for a terminal fault
• Large capacitor: initial rate of decay of the voltage where the voltage in one phase drops to zero, the voltage
is 10% per cycle. For a 620 V drive this corresponds in the other two phases does not drop below ~v'3=86%.
to 433 pFjkW. The top curve in Fig. 9 shows how one phase drops
Note that "small capacitor" and "large capacitor" are significantly in voltage. The other two phases drop less
only slightly outside of the range of capacitor values cur- and their maxima move away from each other. In the
rently used in ac drives. The upper plot in Fig. 8 shows bottom curve of Fig. 9 the effect of this on the de bus
the voltages at the drive terminals for a sag of type C. voltage is shown. For not too small values of the de bus
Note that these are the line-to-line voltages, as the recti- capacitance, the de bus voltage reaches a value slightly
fier is connected in delta. The voltage drops in two phases, below the peak value of the voltage in the two phases with
while the sinewaves move towards each other. The third the moderate drop. Again the effect of the sag on the dc
phase does not drop in magnitude. Shown is a sag with bus voltage, and thus on the motor speed and torque, is
a characteristic magnitude of 50% and zero characteristic much less than for a balanced sag.
phase-angle jump. The voltage magnitudes at the drive Fig. 10 shows the influence of the capacitor size on
terminals are 66.1% (in two phases) and 100% (in the the minimum de bus voltage for a type C sag. The de
third phase); phase-angle jumps are -19.1°, +19.1° and bus undervoltage protection normally uses this value as
zero. a trip criterion. There is thus a direct relation between
The effect of this three-phase unbalanced sag on the de the minimum dc bus voltage and the voltage tolerance
bus voltage is shown in the lower plot of Fig. 8 . Even of the drive. It follows from the figure that the presence
for the small capacitance, the de bus voltage does not of sufficient capacitance makes that the de bus voltage
drop below 70%. For the large capacitance, the de bus never drops below a certain value, no matter how deep
voltage hardly deviates from its normal operating value. the sag at ac side is. This is obviously due to the one
In the latter case, the drive will never trip during a sag of phase of the ac voltage which stays at its normal value.
type C, no matter how low the characteristic magnitude For large capacitance, the drop in dc bus voltage is very
of the sag. As one phase remains at its pre-event value, small. The smaller the capacitance, the more the drop in
the three-phase rectifier simply operates as a single-phase de bus voltage.
rectifier during the voltage sag. The minimum de bus voltage for a sag of type D, is
The voltages on ac side and dc side of the rectifier are shown in Fig. 11 . Comparison with Fig. 10 for type C,
shown in Fig. 9 for a three-phase unbalanced sag of type reveals that for a type D sag the minimum dc bus voltage
D with characteristic magnitude 50% and no character- continues to drop with lower characteristic magnitude,
istic phase-angle jump. The magnitude of the voltages even with large capacitor size. But again an increase in
at the drive terminals is 50%, 90.14%, and 90.14%, with capacitance can significantly reduce the voltage drop at
phase-angle jumps zero, -13.9° and +13.9°. the de bus. For a drive with large capacitance, the de bus
voltage does not drop below 80%, even for the deepest
.'
5.0.8
.E
.. ,
..
o
C>
'50.6
.,
>
::>
.c
.g0.4 ...................... ........ t :': ::.~ .-.:.~ .7.."":..:. :~·:: - - ·~ ·'":: , ~ ~..-
E
.§ ..: 5.0.8
oS
~0.2
..
o
C>
~0.6
.,::>
00 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 .c
Olarac:teristic magnitude in po .g0.4
E
::>
.5
Fig. 10. Minimum dc bus voltage as a function of the
~0.2
characteristic magnitude of three-phase unbalanced
sags of type C. Solid line: large capacitance; dashed
line: small capacitance; dotted line: no capacitance
0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8
connected to the de bus. OlaracIeristie magnitude in pu
~.8
1------<->:
/... . • •• ••.~.~.~ .....
balanced sags of type C, for three capacitor sizes: large
(top); small (middle); and none (bottom) and three
values of the minimum PN-factol": 1.0 (solid line); 0.95
~ _... -_...... ...... (dashed line); 0.90 (dotted line).
~0.6 .
;; ---_... - .
oS
.go... ....
§ .•...•.....•....
.5
~0.2 ........................
0 ·····
o 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8
Charadetislic magnilude in po
unbalanced sag.
~ (~Jw2)
2) Unbalanced Sags: The effect of three-phase unbal-
=W(Td-Tmec:hl (10) anced sags on the motor speed has been calculated under
the assumption that the positive sequence voltage at the
where J is the mechanical moment of motor plus load, motor terminals is equal to the lIDS voltage at the de bus.
w is the motor speed (in radians per second), Tel is the The de bus rms voltages have been used to calculate the
drop in motor speed according to (13) . Voltage-tolerance
~ ....,---_. -
.",
.
ceo
~ 70
c
~
80
/
./ :
I
& ! :
.
Co
..
.5 60
'gsa
.5 60
]
'E
g' 4O ..
~ 40
.
' E
030 .
E
o
'" 20 "'20
10
Fig. 15. Voltage tolerance curves for sag type C, no Fig. 17. Voltage tolerance curves for sag type C,
capacitance connected to the dc bus. maximum-pennissible slip increase: 1%, large (solid
line), small (dashed) , and no (dotted) capacitance.
--- ---------
ceo ..." ....
.i~
..~ _eo
c:
:,
:",
,~ _ .
Co
.5 60
.g s
~ .~
"
it
,
......
....... • -:
2
g,40 ..
.5 60
-g
t:
:.
i•
E §.4Q H /'
.
o os ~:
"'20
E
..
co
:.
"'20 :':.
I:
,,
I
,,
200 400 600
sag duralicn i\ ms
eoo 1000
:",
;'
:".
.
o 200 400 600 800 1000
Sag dUI2lion i\ ms
Fig. 16. Voltage tolerance curves for sag type C, small
capacitance connected to the dc bus. Fig. 18. Voltage tolerance curves for sag type D,
maximum-permissible slip increase: 1% and 10%,
large (solid line), small (dashed), and no (dotted) ca-
curves wereobtained like in Fig. 14 . The results for type
pacitance connected to the dc bus.
C sags are shown in Fig. 15,16 and 17 . Fig. 15 and 16
present voltage-tolerance curves for different values of the
10% increase. The improvement for the 1% load might
maximum drop in speed which the load can tolerate, for
look marginal, but one should realise that the majority
no capacitance and for a small capacitance, respectively,
of deep voltage sags has a duration around 100 ms. The
present at the de bus. Even the small capacitor clear~y
large capacitance increases the voltage tolerance from 50
improves the drive's voltage tolerance. Below a certain
to 95 ms for a 50% sag magnitude. This will give a serious
characteristic magnitude of the sag, the rms value of the
reduction in the number of equipment trips.
de bus voltage remains constant. This shows up as a ver-
3) Effect of the PN-Factor: Voltage-tolerance curves have
tical line in Fig. 16. Fig . 17 compares drives with
been determined as well for different values of the PN-
large, small and no de bus capacitance for.a l<>a:d with a
factor. For type D sags the effect turned out to be very
1% permissible increase in slip . The capacitor SIZe has a
small. Fig. 19 shows the effect of the PN-factor on the
very significant influence on the drive performance.
voltage tolerance for type C sags. The case with a large
The large improvement in drive performance with ca-
capacitor and 1% slip increase was chosen: the solid line
pacitor size, for type C sags is obviously related to the one
in Fig. 17 . Solid, dashed and dotted lines again refer
phase of the ac supply which does not drop in voltage. For
to minimum PN-factor values of 1.0, 0.95 and 0.9, re-
a large capacitance, this phase keeps up the supply vol~
spectively. The PN-factor significantly affects the voltage
age as if almost nothing happened. For type D sags, this
tolerance curve.
effect is much smaller, as even the least-affected phases
show a drop in voltage magnitude. Fig. 18 shows
E. Overview of Mitigation Methods for AC Drives
the influence of the capacitor size on the voltage toler-
ance for type D sags. The three curves on the left are • Automatic Restart The most-commonly used mit-
for an increase in slip of 1%, the ones on the right for a igation method is to enable the operation of the in-
1001-~---=;::::;:::===9
......-;.;,... ..__... fier consisting of thyristors, like used in de drives,
gives some control of the de bus voltage. When
_ 80
c: the ac bus voltage drops, the firing angle of the
..@
Co
thyristors can be decreased to maintain the de bus
..
.s60
-e
I
voltage. For unbalanced sags different firing-angles
3
~ 40
E
. are needed for the three phases which could make
the control rather complicated. The disadvantage is
..
C>
"'20
that the control system takes a few cycles to react,
and the firing-angle control makes the drive sensi-
tive to phase-angle jumps.
200 400 600 800 1000 Another option is to usesome additional powerelec-
Sag dura1ion in IllS
tronics to draw additional current from the supply
Fig. 19. Voltage tolerance curve for sag type C, large during the sag. A kind of power electronic current
capacitance, 1% slip increase, three values of the min- source is installed between the diode rectifier and
imum PN-factor: 1.0 (solid line); 0.95 (dashed line); the de bus capacitor. This current can be controlled
0.90 (dotted line).
in such a way that it keepsthe voltage at the de bus
constant during a voltage sag [11, 12].
verter, so that the motor no longer loads the drive.
This prevents damage due to overeurrents, overvolt- By using an IGBT front-end, complete control of
ages and torque oscillations. After the voltage re- the dc voltage is possible. Algorithms have been
covers the drive is automatically restart. The dis- proposed to keep the dc voltage constant for any
advantage of this method is that the motor load unbalance, drop, or change in phase-angle in the
slows down more than needed. When synchronous ac voltages [13, 14, 15]. An additional advantage
restart is used the drop in speed can be somewhat is that these IGBT inverters enable a sinusoidal in-
limited, but non-synchronous restart leads to very put current, solving a lot of the harmonic problems
large drops in speed or even stand-still of the motor. caused by adjustable-speed drive.
An important requirement for this type of drives The main limitation of all these methods is that
is that the controller remain on-line. Powering of they have a minimum operating voltage and will
the controllers during the sag can be from the de certainly not operate for an interruption.
capacitor or from separate capacitors or batteries.
Alternatively, one can use the kinetical energy of • Improving the Inverter Instead of controlling the
the mechanical load to power the de bus capacitor de bus voltage, it is also possible to control the mo-
during a sag or interruption [9, 10, 11]. tor terminal voltage. Normally the speed controller
assumes a constant de bus voltage and calculates the
• Installing Additional Energy Storage The volt- switching instants of the inverter from this. Wesaw
age tolerance problem of drives is ultimately an en- earlier that the effect of this is that the de bus volt-
ergy problem. In many applications the motor will age is amplitude modulated on the desired motor
slowdown too much to maintain the process. This terminal voltages. This effect can be compensated
can be solved by adding additional capacitors or a by considering the de bus voltage in the algorithms
battery block to the dc bus. Also the installation of used to calculate the switching instants.
a motor generator set feeding into the dc bus will
give the required energy. A large amount of stored V. OTHER SENSITIVE LOAD
energy is needed to ensure tolerance against three-
phase sags and short interruptions. For sags due to A. Adjustable-Speed DC Drives
single-phase and phase-to-phase faults, which are
the most common ones, only a limited amount of DC drives have traditionally been much better suited
stored energy is needed as at least one phase of the for adjustable-speed operation than ac drives. The speed
supply voltage remains at a high value. of ac motors is, in first approximation, proportional to the
frequency of the voltage. The speed of de motors is pro-
• Improving the Rectifier The use of a diode rec- portional to the magnitude of the voltage. Magnitude has
tifier is cheap but makes control of the de bus volt- been much easier to vary than frequency. Even for mod-
age impossible. The moment the ac voltage maxi- em drives, de motors are used when very precise speed or
mum drops below the de bus voltage, the rectifier position control is needed.
stops supplying energy and it 's up to the capaci-
tor to power the motor. Using a controlled recti-
Modem de drives consist of a three-phase controlled withstand the speed drop due to a sag. As deep
rectifier powering the armature winding, and the single- sags are rare it can take a long time before such a
phase controlled or non-controlled rectifier for the field problem is discovered.
winding. The armature circuit seldom contains any ca-
pacitance, as the inductance of the armature is high enough • When the voltage recovers, the motor takes a high
to keep the current constant. The field circuit is more inrush current: first to build up the airgap field
resistive and thus needs some capacitance to prevent ex- (the electrical inrush), next to reaccelerate the mo-
cessive current and torque ripples. tor (the mechanical inrush). This inrush can cause a
The most sensitive part of the de drive is the three- post-fault sag with a duration of one second or more,
phase controlled rectifier. Most sags are unbalanced and and lead to tripping of undervoltage and overcur-
thus associated with a phase-angle jump in at least one rent relays. Again this problem is more severe for a
of the phases. The firing-angle control of the rectifier will weak supply, and can thus become a problem when
be affected by this, and might even notice it as a missing the amount of motor load increases.
pulse. The most likely reaction of the rectifier is to simply • For unbalanced sags the motor is subjected to a pos-
trip the drive. itive sequence as well as to a negative sequence volt-
If the rectifier does not trip, the drop in armature volt- age at the terminals. The negative sequence volt-
age will cause a fast drop in armature current and thus in age causes a torque ripple and a large negative se-
torque. Even a small drop in armature voltage can bring quence current. The phase currents are however still
the torque down to zero, leading to a reduction in speed. smaller than the starting currents, thus should not
As de drives are often used for speed-sensitive processes, lead to process interruption.
this will in most cases not be tolerated.
During three-phase unbalanced sags, the drop in arma- • Many induction motors are protected by contactors.
ture voltage will differ from the drop in field voltage. This These tend to drop out when the voltage drops be-
can lead to strange drive behaviour, including overspeed. low 50% for more than one or two cycles. If no
Regenerative drives suffer commutation failures when a automatic reclosing is used, the motor load will be
sag occurs during regeneration. lost. Most reported induction motor trips are ac-
tually due to tripping of the contactor. Using de
B. Directly Fed Induction Motors contactors will solve this problem.
A directly-fed induction motor is normally rather in- C.. Directly Fed Synchronous Motors
sensitive to voltage sags, but there are a few phenomena
that could lead to process interruption due to a sag. A synchronous motor has similar problems with voltage
sags as an induction motor: overcurrents, torque oscilla-
• Deep sags lead to severe torque oscillations at sag tions and drop in speed. But a synchronous motor can
commencement and when the voltage recovers. These actually loose synchronism with the supply. An induc-
could lead to damage to the motor or to process in- tion motor is very likely able to reaccelerate again after
terruptions. The recovery torque gets more severe the fault: it might take too long for the process, the cur-
when the internal flux is out of phase with the sup- rent might be too high for the motor (or its protection), or
ply voltage, thus when the sag is associated with a the supply might be too weak, but at least it is in theory
phase-angle jump. possible. When a synchronous motor loses synchronism it
has to be stopped and the load has to be removed before
• At ~ commencement the magnetic field will be
it can be brought back to nominal speed again.
driven out of the airgap. The associated transient
causes an additional drop in speed for deep sags.
D. Lighting
During this period the motor contributes to the
short-circuit current and somewhat mitigates the Most lamps just flicker when a voltage sags occur. Some-
fault. body using the lamp will probably notice it, but it will
not be considered as something serious. It is different
• When the voltage recovers, the airgap field has to
be build up again. In weaker systems this can last when the lamp completely extinguishes and takes sev-
up to 100 IDS, during which the motor continues to eral minutes to recover. In industrial environments, in
slow down. This could become a problem in sys- places where a large number of people are gathered, or
tems where the motor load has grown over the years. with street lighting, this can lead to dangerous situations.
Where in the past a voltage sag would not be a
problem, now"suddenly" the process can no longer
VI. REFERENCES [14] E.P. Wiechmann, J.R. Espinoza, J.L. Rodriguez, Com-
pensated carrier PWM synchronization: A novel method
[1] Cigre Working Group 34.01, Reliable fault clearance and to achieve self-regulation and AC unbalance compensa-
back-up protection, Final report August 1997. tion in AC fed converters, IEEE Transactions on Power
Electronics, vo1.7, no.2, April 1992, pp.342-348.
[2] T .S.Key, Diagnosing power-quality related computer
problems, IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, [15] P. Rioual, H. Pouliquen, J.-P. Louis, Regulation of a
Vol.15 (1979), p.381-393. PWM rectifier in the unbalanced network state using
a generalized model, IEEE Transactions on Power Elec-
[3] IEEE Recommended Practice for evaluating electric
tronics, vol.11, no.3, May 1996. pp.495-502.
power system compatibility with electronic process equip-
ment, IEEE Std 1346-1998.
,
I
supply I supply II
device A 72.6 29.1
device B 14.6 7.9
supply I supply II
device A 1026 891
device B 546 779
In practical cases, two additional problems have to be Fig. 3. Two-dimensional bar-ehart of the sag density
solved before the actual comparison can be made. At function for the data shown in Tablem.
first one needs to obtain the data, both about the supply
performance and about the equipment voltage tolerance . This is done in Table III for data obtained from a large
Methods for obtaining the equipment voltage tolerance power quality survey [1]. Each element in the table gives
have been discussed in part 2 of this tutorial. Meth- the number of events with magnitude and duration within
ods for obtaining the system performance are discussed a certain range; e.g. magnitude between 40 and 50% and
further on in this part. For obtaining the data, a cus- duration between 400 and 600 IDS. Each element gives
tomer often needs co-operation from the utility and from the density of sags in that magnitude and duration range,
the equipment manufacturer. The second problem which hence the terms "sag density table" and "sag density func-
has to be solved, is the presentation of the data. System tion" .
performance and equipment immunity are normally not The sag density function is typically presented as a bar-
one-dimensional, as suggested in the above example. We chart. This is done in Fig. 3 for the data shown in Table
already saw that for voltage sags both magnitude and du- III . The length of each bar is now proportional to the
ration playa role, and possibly also unbalance and phase- number of sags in the corresponding range. The bar chart
angle jump. The data has to be presented in such a way is easier to get an impression of the distribution of the sag
that a compatibility study can be made. Some sugges- characteristics, but it is less useful to get numerical values.
tions for this are given in the next section. In this case we see from Fig. 3 that the .m ajority of sags
has a magnitude above 80% and a duration less than 200
II. PRESENTATION OF RESULTS: VOLTAGE SAG ms. There is also a concentration of short interruptions
Co-ORDINATION CHART with durations of 800 ms and over.
0.7 .
:l
CoM
.5
~o.s
~
co
t'l:l 0,"
:E
0.3
..
Q,2
Q,1
0
0 10 1S 20 2S 30 3S 40 4S
lkrBtion in cyc:l~
Fig. 2: Scatter d iagram obtained by one year of monitoring at an indust rial site.
Table III: EXAMPLE OF SAG DENSITY TABLE: NUMBER. OF SAGS PER. YEAR.; DATA OBTAINED FR.OM [1].
magnitude 0-200ms 200-400ms 40o-600ms 60o-S00ms >soOms
S0-90% IS.0 2.S 1.2 0.5 2.1
70-80% 7.7 0.7 0.4 0.2 0.5
60-70% 3.9 0.6 0.2 0.1 0.2
50-60% 2.3 0.4 0.1 0.1 0.1
40-50% 1.4 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.1
3G-40% 1.0 0.2 0.1 0.0 0.1
20-30% 0.4 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.0
10-20% 0.4 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.1
0-10% 1.0 0.3 0.1 0.0 2.1
~ IO ags p<r"f'C'" 90li
r:-1-'J . ,,/
----r- llOIi
~/ J ./ 7Oli g'
/ d--s sagsp<r"f'C'"
- '"3
f 5OIO,g
) :>
-;:;
-
'/ e
"",g-
"V
"
"
.
~ 'f./j
J
I---"'"
./
,,/
---- ~
1/
lJ
J
-
trip on average 4.5 times per year. From such a table the •
number of equipment trips per year can be obtained very
easily.
TABLE IV
EXAMPLE OF CUMULATIVE SAG TABLE , NUMBER OF
o.a
... -
o.4s 0.50$ ....
--·...
eo
$<19
"",gnitude tinguis
. e :
rang e
80-90~
o· • monitoring the supply at a (large) number of po-
...l;;::>
E
sitions at the same time, aimed at estimating an
z• "average power quality" : a so-called power quality
z survey.
t4~~eO-
QOc:ici~
~~~~~ • monitoring the supply at one site, aimed at estimat-
oQoc;;
$<19duration ing the power quality at that specific site.
r'DnC]e
Fig. 7. Voltage sag co-ordination chart, reproduced Large power quality surveys have been performed in
from Fig. 5 , with non-rectangular equipment voltage several countries. Typically several tens up to a few hun-
tolerance curve.
dred monitors are connected at one or two voltage levels
spread over a whole country or the service territory of
For a non-rectangular equipment voltage tolerance curve,
a utility. The chosen sites have to be representative for
as shown in Fig. 7 the procedure becomes somewhat
the whole country or system. Choosing the sites is often
more complicated. Consider this device as consisting of
more lead by accessibility of the site and willingness to
two components, each with a rectangular voltage toler-
ance curve. co-operate of local utilities, than by other considerations.
But even without that it would be difficult to make a truly
• Component A trips when the voltage drops below random choice of sites. Sites come in different types, but
50% for longer than 100 ms, according to the con- it is hard to decide which sites are different from a sag
tour chart this happens 6 times per year. viewpoint without first doing the survey. A further anal-
ysis of data from this generation of surveys will teach us
• Component B trips when the voltage drops below more about the differences between sites . This knowledge
85% for longer than 200 ms, which happens 12 times can be used for choosing sites in future surveys.
per year .
B. Magnitude Versus Duration: EFI Survey
Adding these two numbers (6+12=18) would count dou-
ble those voltage sags for which both components trip. The Norwegian Electric Power Research Institute (EFI,
Both components trip when the voltage drops below 50% recently renamed" SINTEF Energy Research") has mea-
for longer than 200 ms; about 4 times per year. This cor- sured voltage sags and other voltage disturbances at over
responds to point C in the cliart. The number of equip- 400 sites in Norway. The majority (379) of the sites were
ment trips is thus equal to: at low-voltage (230 and 4OOV) , 39 of them were at dis-
tribution voltages and the rest at various voltage levels
FA + FB - Fe = 6 + 12 - 4 = 14 (1)
[4].
Note that making the equipment voltage tolerance curve The sag density functions, as obtained by the EFI sur-
rectangular (100 ms, 85%) would have resulted in the in- vey, are presented in Fig. 8 .
correct value of 20 trips per year. Fig. 9 give the 95% percentile of the sag distribution
over the various sites. A stochastic distribution function
III. POWER QUALITY MONITORING was created for the total number of sags measured at one
single site. The 95% percentile of this distribution was
A common way of obtaining an estimate of the perfor- chosen as a reference site. The number of sags at this site
mance of the supply is by recording the disturbance events is thus exceeded by only 5% of the sites .
by using a so-called power quality monitor. For each event Note that other surveys give similar results as the Nor-
the monitor records a magnitude and a duration plus pos- wegian survey. Other surveys are described in, among
sibly a few other characteristics and often also a certain others, [5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10].
c. Variation in Time
D. Individual Sites
1m
Monitoring is not only used for large power quality sur-
veys, it is also used for assessing the power quality of
individual sites . For harmonics and voltage transients,
reliable results can be obtained in a relatively short pe-
riod of time. Voltage sags and interruptions of interest
for compatibility assessment have occurrence frequencies
,- - - - - of once a month or less. Much longer monitoring periods
are needed for those events.
To estimate how long the monitoring period needs to
be, we assume that the time-between-events is exponen-
tially distributed. This means that the probability of ob-
serving an event, in let's say the next minute, is indepen-
Fig. 9. Sag density for 95% percentile of EFI low- dent of the time elapsed since the last event. Thus events
voltage networks.
occur completely independent from each other. Under
that condition the number of events captured within a
certain period is a stochastic variable with a so-called
Poisson distribution.
• !
i
• i
j
..
C 1%
i
~ I
C 10 I-- - I--
i
..
C>
Cl
I
. I-- ~ I--
E i
u
... ....- ....-
~
~ I-- i- ~ I--
Fig . 10: Variation of voltage sag frequency through the year, data obtained from Dorr [11].
therefore not at all constant but follows the annual • By using the electric circuit model of the power sys-
weather patterns. But the amount of weather activ- tem, the sag characteristics are calculated for each
ity also varies significantly from year to year. Due fault position. Any power system model, and any
to the relation between voltage sags and adverse calculation method can be used. The choice will
weather, the sags come in clusters. To get a certain depend on the availability of tools' and on the char-
accuracy in the estimate, one needs to observe more acteristics which need to be calculated.
than a minimum number of clusters. It is obvious
that this will increase the required monitoring pe- • The results from the two previous steps (sag charac-
riod. To get a long-term average a long monitoring teristics and frequency of occurrence) are combined
period is needed. to obtain stochastical information about the number
of sags with characteristics within certain ranges.
• Power systems themselves are not static but change
from year to year. This especially holds for distri- Below we will first give an example of the processing
bution networks. The number of feeders connected needed, followed by a discussion about the choice of the
to a substation can change; or another protective fault positions.
relay can be used. Also component failure rates
can change, e.g. due to ageing; increased loading of B. Hypothetical Example
components; different maintenance policies; or be-
Consider, as an example, a 100 Ian line as shown in Fig.
cause the amount of squirrels in the area suddenly
11 . Short circuits in this part of the system are repre-
decreases.
sented through 8 fault positions. The choice of the fault
Despite these disadvantages, site monitoring can be positions depends on the sag characteristics which are of
very helpful in finding and solving power quality prob- interest. In this example we consider magnitude and du-
lems, as some things are simply very hard to predict. In ration. Fault position 1 (representing busbar faults in
addition, stochastic assessment requires a certain level of the local substation) and fault position 2 (faults close to
understanding of voltage disturbances and their origIn. the local substation) will result in the same sag magni-
This understanding can only be achieved through moni- tude. But the fault-clearing time is different in this case,
toring. therefore two fault positions have been chosen. The fault
positions along the line (2, 3, 4 and 5) have similar fault-
IV. THE METHOD OF FAULT POSITIONS clearing time but different sag magnitude. Fault positions
6, 7 and 8 result in the same sag magnitude but different
A. Outline of the Method duration.
For each fault position a frequency, a magnitude and a
The method of fault positions proceeds, schematically,
duration are determined, as shown in Table VI . Failure
as follows:
rates of 8 faults per 100 Ian of line per year and 10 faults
• Determine the area of the system in which short per 100 substations per year, have been used. It should
circuits will be considered. be realised here that not all fault positions along the line
represent an equal fraction of the line; e.g. position 5
• Split this area into small parts. Short circuits within
represents 25km (between 5/8th and 7/8th of the line)
one part should lead to voltage sags with similar
but position 6 only 12.51an (between 7/8th and 1).
characteristics. Each small part is represented by
The resulting sags (1 through 8 in Table VI ) are
one fault position in an electric circuit model of the
placed, either in bins or immediately in a cumulative form.
power system.
Table vn shows how the various sags fit in the bins. Fill-
• For each fault position, the short-circuit frequency ing in the frequencies (failure rates) leads to Table VIn
is determined. The short-circuit frequency is the and its cumulative equivalent shown in Table IX . Alter-
number of short-circuit faults per year in the small natively it is possible to update the cumulative table after
part of the system represented by a fault position. each fault position. Please note that this is a completely
Table VI· FAULT POSITIONS WITH RESULTING SAG MAGNITUDE AND DURATION
fault position frequency magnitude duration
1 busbar fault in local substation O.l/yr 0% 180 ms
2 fault on a line close to local substation 4/yr 0% 80 ms
3 fault at 25% of the line 2/yr 32% 90 ms
4 fault at 50% of the line 2/yr 49% 105 ms
5 fault at 75% of the line 2/yr 57% 110 IDS
6 fault at 100% of local line l/yr 64% 250ms
7 fault at 0% of remote line 2/yr 64% 90 InS
8 busbar fault in remote substation O.l/yr 64% 180 ms
TABLE VIII
TABLE WITH EVENT FREQUENCIES FOR EXAMPLE OF
METHOD OF FAULT POSITIONS.
TABLE IX
load CuMULATIVE TABLE FOR EXAMPLE OF METHOD OF
FAULT POSITIONS.
Zs V
.ccrit =71 _V (9)
where Zs is the source impedance and z the feeder
impedance per unit length. All the lines originating at
the substation are assumed infinitely long; the exposed
length is simply the critical distance times the number of
lines.
11 kV, 151 MVA
The source impedance Zs is calculated by assuming
that all lines contribute equally to the short circuit current
_+----t-- --t-"--=--,. 30$
"40$ for a busbar fault . During a fault on one of these lines,
0" i-_ _--'
,...--.-\
""t--_ _
only (N - 1) out of N lines contribute to the short circuit
50% current. Thus the source impedance in p.u . equals:
60%
// /~ 70% Zs = ~ SblUe
N -1 S!ault
(10)
~- /
with N the number of lines originating at the substa-
_ - - _ 80% tion, Sbase the base power, and S!ault the short circuit
power for a substation fault . The exposed length is found
from:
(11)
~tJ
s-
.,
~C1
&.al
"':m
a x
.:»rX
:.:-x-x
d I
:UI!
! SIl
a
~.
%=~
a 21 Cl III lEI GI D 21 Cl III lEI GI
JIg.ogrftJOo .. poo-.t Iog . . . . . . . . . ponont
:all 1al
i 12JI x
,,2iIII
I
xi
E
~2m sUI!
~SD
§1SD
~GJ If
!m
lUI!
SIl
a
D 21
~
Cl
-:?-;¥.
III
!?
lEI
•
2D
a
a 21
,--x-='
Cl
/. x·x
;z.-'X:
III lEI GI
Iog ......... poo-.t Iog . . . . . . . . . ponont
Fig . 13: Exposed length for four 400-k V substations : comparison between the method of fault positions (stars) and the method of critical
distances (c:ircles).
All this data can be obtained without much difficulty. [12] M.R. Qader, M.H.J. Bollen, R.N. Allan, Stochastic pre-
Another interesting observation from equation (11) is diction of voltage sags in a large transmission system,
about the variation of sag frequency among different sub- IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, Vol.35,
stations. The main variations can apparently be brought no.I, Jan. 1999, pp.152-162.
back to fault level, number of lines originating at the sub-
station, and fault frequency. Information about the first
two is easy to obtain. The latter might need to be esti-
mated.
VI. REFERENCES
tance protection. One should realise however that • Split busses or substations in the supply path to
faster circuit breakers could be very expensive. limit the number of feeders in the exposed area.
• A certain reduction in grading margin is probably • Install current-limiting coils at strategic places in
possible. This will not so much reduce the fault- the system to increase the "electrical distance" to
clearing time in normal situations, but in case the the fault. One should realise that this can make the
protection fails and a backup relay has to intervene. sag worse for other customers.
When reducing the grading margin one should re-
alise that loss of selectivity is unacceptable in most • Feed the bus with the sensitive equipment from two
transmission systems as it leads to the loss of two or more substations. A voltage sag in one substation
or more components at the same time. will be mitigated by the infeed from the other sub-
stations. The more independent the substations are
• Faster back-up protection is one of the few effec- the more the mitigation effect. The best mitigation
tive means of reducing fault-clearing time in trans- effect is by feeding from two different transmission
mission systems. Possible options are to use inter- substations. Introducing the second infeed increases
tripping for dist·ance protection, and breaker-failure the number of sags, but reduces their severity.
protection.
The number of short interruptions can be prevented
IV. CHANGING THE POWER SYSTEM by conrrecting less customers to one recloser (thus by in-
stalling more reclosers), or by getting rid of the reclosure
By implementing changes in the supply system, the scheme altogether. Short as well as long interruptions are
severity of the event can be reduced. Here again the costs considerably reduced in frequency by installing additional
can become very high, especially for transmission and sub- redundancy in the system. The costs for this are only jus-
stransmission voltage levels. Some examples of mitigation tified for large industrial and commercial customers. In-
methods especially directed towards voltage sags are: termediate solutions reduce the duration of (long) inter-
ruptions by having a level of redundancy available within
• Install a generator near the sensitive load. The gen- a certain time.
erators will keep up the voltage during a remote sag.
The reduction in voltage drop is equal to the per- V. INSTALLING MITIGATION EQUIPMENT
centage contribution of the generator station to the
fault current. In case a combined-heat-and-power The most commonly applied method of mitigation is
station is planned, it is worth to consider the posi- the installation of additional equipment at the system-
tion of its electrical connection to the supply. equipment interface. Also recent developments point to-
wards a continued interest in this way of mitigation. The
popularity of mitigation equipment is explained by it be- VI. IMPROVING EQUIPMENT IMMUNITY
ing the only place where the customer has control over the
situation. Both changes in the supply as well as improve- Improvement of equipment immunity is probably the
ment of the equipment are often completely outside of most effective solution against equipment trips due to
the control of the end-user. Some examples of mitigation voltage sags. But as a short-time solution it is often not
equipment are: suitable. A customer often only finds out about equip-
ment immunity after the equipment has been installed.
• Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS). The most com- For consumer electronics it is very hard for a customer
monly used device to protect low-power equipment to find out about immunity of the equipment as he is
(computers, etc.) against voltage sags and interrup- not in direct contact with the manufacturer. Even most
tions. During the sag or interruptions, the power adjustable-speed drives have become off-the-shelf equip-
supply is taken over by an internal battery. The ment where the customer has no influence on the specifi-
battery can supply the load for, typically, between cations. Only large industrial equipment is custom-made
15 and 30 minutes. for a certain application, which enables the incorporation
• • e • • of voltage-tolerance requirements.
• Static transfer SWItch. A static transfer SWItch SWItches A t from i . I . t (d .
·h h
h I ad f rom the supp1y Wit t e sag to ano er
th par rom Improving arge equipmen rives, process-
teo ) . . f. .
ithi ~ ·11· ds Thi ld limit control computers a thorough inspection 0 the immunity
SUPPIy WI In a lew mi iseconcs, IS wou I fall 1 1 ignifi I
·
the d urat Ion f t 1 th h If 1 0 contactors, re ays, sensors, etc. can a so 81 eant y
0 a sag 0 ess an one a r-cyc e as-. th id th h
. . .. Improve e process rl e- roug.
summg. that a SUitable. alternate
. supply 15 available. Wh en new equipmen
. t is i talle,
IS Ins
d mrorma
. E. - tiIon aboU t it
I s
Static transfer SWitches for . . medium voltage levels. it
Immunl y s ou h ld b btai
e 0 aJ.D ed fr th
om e manulac r. t
urer b e-
are a new but very promismg technology, they are .. . . h ld
-I bi ~ It I Is 25 kV forehand. Where possible, Immumty requirements S ou
avai a e lor vo age eve Up t o . be iIDC1uded iIn the equipmen
. t speerificat·Ion.
• Dynamic Voltage Restorer (DVR). This device uses For short interruptions equipment immunity is very
modem power electronic components to insert a se- hard to achieve; for long interruptions it is impossible
ries voltage source between the supply and the load. to achieve. The equipment should in so far be immune
The voltage source compensates for the voltage drop to interruptions, that no damage is caused. and no dan-
due to the sag. Some devices use internal energy gerous situation arises. This is especially important when
storage to make up for the drop in active power considering a complete installation.
supplied by the system. They can only mitigate
sags up to a maximum duration. Other devices take VII. DIFFERENT EVENTS AND MITIGATION METH'ODS
the same amount of active power from the supply
by increasing the current. These can only mitiga.te Fig. 3 shows the magnitude and duration of volt-
sags down to a minimum magnitude. This is also a
age sags and interruptions resulting from various system
rather new and promising technology, availa.ble both events. For different events different mitigation strategies
apply,
for medium voltage and low voltage levels. Also a
number of alternative configurations have been sug- • Sags due to short-circuit faults in the transmission
gested, some more promising than others. For low- and sub-transmission system are characterised by a
voltage equipment this new technology may not add short duration, typically up to 100 ms. These sags
much above a UPS, for medium voltage load, this are very hard to mitigate at the source and also im-
may prove a very expensive but the only feasible provements in the system are seldom feasible. The
solution. only way of mitigating these sags is by improve-
• Motor-generator sets. MG-sets are the classical ~ ment of the equipment or, where this turns out to
be unfeasible, installing mitigation equipment. For
lution for sag and interruption mitigation with large
equipment. They are obviously not suitable for an low-power equipment a UPS is a straightforward s0-
lution, for high-power equipment and for complete
office environment but the noise and the mainte-
installations several competing tools are emerging.
nance requirements are often no objection in an in-
dustrial environment. Some manufacturers combine • As we saw before the duration of sags due to dis-
the MG-set with a backup generator, others com- tribution system faults depends on the type of pro-
bine it with power-electronic converters to obtain a tection used. Ranging from less than a cycle for
longer ride-through time. current-limiting fuses up to several seconds for over-
current relays in underground or industrial distri-
bution systems. The long sag duration makes that
i 100$
~80CJ)
ca
::s
50%
0% ''----+---............- - - - - - - - -
0.1 s 1 sec Duration
VIII. REFERENCES
[1] Power System Protection, Institution of Electrical Engi-
neers, London, 1995.