Broken Delta Protection for Earth Faults Page 1 of 3

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Broken Delta Protection for

Earth Faults
Vivian Ong Follow
Electrical, Distribution Protection… 60 17 6

The Broken Delta configuration is used to protect against earth faults. It is a

configuration that works by monitoring the vector sum of the phase voltages. It
consists of a delta connection on the secondary of a potential transformer that is
open at one point as in the figure. In such a construction, when a balanced three
phase voltage is present in the star connected primary, the voltage across the
broken point of the delta connection would be zero, as it would be a vector sum of
all three voltages.

In the event of a ground fault in one phase, the phase-to-ground voltage in the
remaining two phases is now equal to the phase-to-phase voltage with a
displacement of 60 degrees. The voltage at the broken delta becomes 3Vo or three
times the phase-to-ground voltage.

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This voltage can be measured by a relay and can be used to trip the power system. A
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resistor is usually connected across the broken delta connection to
prevent Ferro resonance, a condition that occurs when the line capacitance and the
inductance in the potential transformers reach a state of resonance.
Broken delta transformers are usually marked as 11kV/√3:110 volts. It means that
the transformer is designed that in the event of a ground fault in the primary side,
the secondary output will be 110 V.

The differences between open-delta and broken-delta are the connection of

Potential Transformer (PT) and the magnitude of voltage. The broken-delta
connection uses three single-phase PTs. All three primaries are connected between
line and ground. Their secondaries are delta-connected, except that one corner of
the delta is left open-circuited. This arrangement is also called a residually-
connected circuit. Its principle benefit is that the residual voltage is much higher
than that of the open-delta connection (described in next paragraph!) Thus, it is
more sensitive to earth-faults.
The open-delta connection uses two single-phase PTs. They, too, provide 3-phase
transformation, but the resultant secondary voltage magnitude is about 1/3 that of
the broken-delta arrangement. Furthermore, secondary-circuit failures that could
negateproper fault detection are virtually ignored!

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Good knowledge

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