E.

Switch Gear
Switchgears are basically the controlling circuits using which the used to
control any system from Remotely Situated Control Room.

HV Switchgears: Indoor metal clad draw out type switch gears with
associated protective and control equipments are employed. Air break, Air Blast
circuit breakers and Minimum Oil circuit breakers could still be found in some
very old stations. Present trend is to use SF6 or vacuum circuit breakers. SF 6 and
vacuum circuit breakers require smaller size panels and thereby reasonable
amount of space is saved. The main bus bars of the switchgears are most
commonly made up of high conductivity aluminium or aluminium alloy with
recta neu la r cross section mounted inside the sw itcheea r cubicle supported by
moulded epoxy, fibre glass or porcelain insulators. For higher current rating
copper bus bars are sometimes used in switchgears.

LV Swltchgears: LV switchgears feed power supply to motors above

ll0KW and upto160KW rating and to Motor Control Centre's (M.C.C). LV system
is also a grounded system where the neutral of t ra nsformers are solidly
connected to ground. The duty involves momentary loading, total load throws
off, direct on line starting of motors and under certain emergency condition
automatic transfer of loads from one source of supply to the other. The
switchgear consists of metal clad continuous line up of multi-tier draw out type
cubicles of simple and robust construction. Each feeder Is provided with an
individual front access door. The main bus bars and connections shall be of high
grade aluminium or aluminium alloy sized for the specified current rating. The
circuit breakers used in the LV switchgear shall be air break 3 pole with stored
energy, trip free shunt trip mechanism. These are draw out type with three
distinct position namely, Service, Test and Isolated. Each position shall have
mechanical as well as electrical indication. Provision shall be there for local and
remote electrical operation of the breakers. Mechanical trip push button shall
be provided to trip manually in the event of failure of electrical trip circuit.
Safety interlocks shall be provided to prevent insertion and removal of closed
breaker from Service position to Test position and vice versa.
5 P a gr.
 F. Protection

The purpose of generator protection is to provide protection against

abnormal operating condition and during fault condition. In the first case the
machine and the associated circuit may be in order but the operating
parameters (load, frequency, temperature) and beyond the specified limits.
Such abnormal running condition would result in gradual deterioration and
ultimately lead to failure of the generator.

Protection under abnormal running conditions

a) Over current protection: The over current protection is used in

generator protection against external faults as back up protection. Normally
external short circuits are cleared by protection of the faulty section and are not
dangerous to the generator. If this protection fails, the short circuit current
contributed by the generator is normally higher than the rated current of the
generator and cause over heating of the stator, hence generators are provided
with back up over current protection w hich is usually definite t ime lag over
current relay.

b) Over load protection: Persistent over load in rotor and stator circuit
cause heating of winding and temperature rise of the machine. Permissible
duration of the stator and rotor overload depends upon the class of insulation,
thermal time constant, cooling of the machine and is usually recommended by
the manufacturer. Beyond these limits the running of the machine is not
recommended and overload protection thermal relays fed by current
transformer or thermal sensors are provided.

c) Over voltage protection: The over voltage at the generator terminals

may be caused by sudden drop of load and AVR malfunctioning. High voltage
surges ih the system (switching surges or lightning) may also cause over voltage
at the generator terminals. Modern high speed voltage regulators adjust the
excitation current to take care against the high voltage due to load rejection.
6 P a gr.
Lightning arresters connected across the generator transformer terminals take
care of the sudden high voltages due to external surges. As such no special
protection against generator high voltage may be needed. Further
protection provided against high magnetic flux takes care of dangerous increase
of voltage.

d) Unbalance loadlng protection: Unbalance loading is caused by single

phase short circuit outside the generator, opening of one of the contacts of the
generator circuit breaker, snapping of conductors in the switchyard or excessive
single phase load. Unbalance load produces -ve phase sequence current which
cause overheating of the rotor surface and mechanical vibration. Normal ly 10%
of unbalance is permitted provided phase currents do not exceed the rated
values. For -ve phase sequence currents above 5-10% of rated value dangerous
over heating of rotor is caused and protection against this is an essential
requirement.

e) Loss of prime mover protection: In the event of loss of prime mover the
generator operates as a motor and drives the prime mover itself. In some cases
this condition could be very harmful as in the case of steam turbine sets where
steam acts as coolant, maintaining the turbine blades at a constant temperature
and the failure of steam results in overheating due to friction and windage loss
with subsequent distortion of the turbine blade. This can be sensed by a power
relay with a directional characteristic and the machine can be taken out of bar
under this condition. Because of the same reason a continuous very low level of
output from thermal sets are not permissible.

371 P a gr.
 H. DC Power System

DC Power System is a very important part of a power plant. IN Bk.T.P.S.

the DC current majorly used at 220V. This DC supply is produced by converting
220V AC into DC using Rectifier.

Uses of DC Supply:
a) Basic Control System like Relay Coils, Breakers and
Instrumental System.
b) DC Drives like DC Jacking Oil Pump, DC Emergency 011
Pump, DC Scanner Air Fan, DC Seal Oil Pump, DC AOP etc.
c) Charging Battery Bank.
d) DC Illumination.

Battery Bank: Battery Bank acts as the DC Power Source in case of Total
Power Failure. In Bk.T.P.S. Lead-Acid Batteries (+ve Plate= Pb,
-ve plate of Pb0 2 and H2S0 4 as electrolyte) are used to store DC
Power. In Battery Bank 110 no of Cells of 2 Volt each are
present. The capacity of each Battery is 139S A-hr.

41 Pa gC
 G. Unit Auxiliary Power

Unit Auxlllary Power is taken d irectly from the terminals of the Generator
using UAT (Unit Auxiliary Transformer). UAT steps down the Generator Output
(15.75 KV) to 6 ..6KV and form a BUS. There are 2 UAl's are present in each unit.
This 6.6KV BUS directly supply power to FD FAN, ID FAN, BFP, CEP, CW & ACW
PUMPs of their own Unit. Some other BUSs are formed of 415V which supply
necessary power to different sides of the power plant as Cooling Tower, ESP and
Unit's Own LV power.

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0 Page
 e) 100% stator earth fault protection: Earth fault in the entire stator
circuits are detected by a selective earth fault protection covering 100% of the
stator windings. This 100% E/f relay monitors the whole stator winding by
means of a coded signal current continuously injected in the generator winding
through a coupling. Under normal running condition the signal current flows
only in the stray capacitances of the directly connected system circuit.

f) Rotor earth fault protection: Normally a single rotor earth fault is not so
dangerous as the rotor circuit is unearthed and current at fau lt point is zero. So
only alarm is provided on occurrence of 1st rotor earth fault. On occurrence of
the 2nd rotor earth fault between the points of fault the field winding gets short
circuited. The current in field circuit increases, resulting in heating of the field
circuit and the exciter. But the more dangerous is disturbed symmetry of
magnetic circuit due to partial short circuited coils lead ing to mechanical
unbalance.

391 P a gr
Protection under fault condition

a) Differential protection: The protection is used for detection of internal

faults in a specified zone defined by the CTs supplying the differential relay. For
a unit connected system separate differential relays are provided for generator,
generator transformer and unit auxiliary transformer in addition to the overall
differential protection. In order to restrict damage very high differential relay
sensitivity is demanded but sensitivity is limited by C.T errors, high inrush
current during external fault and transformer tap changer variations.

b) Back up impedance protection: This protection is basically designed as

back up protection for the part of the installation situated between the
generator and the associated generator and unit auxiliary transformers. A back
up protection in the form of minimum impedance measurement is used, in
which the current windings are connected to the CTs in the neutral connection
of the generator and its voltage windings through a P.T to the phase to phase
terminal voltage. The pick up impedance is set to such a value that it is only
energized by short circuits in the zone specified above and does not respond to
faults beyond the transformers.

c) Stator earth fault protection: The earth fault protection is the

protection of the generator against damages caused by the failure of insulation
to earth. Present practice of grounding the generator neutral is so designed that
the earth tau It current is limited within 5 and 10 Amp. Fault current beyond this
limit may cause serious damage to the core laminations. This leads to very h lgh
eddy current loss with resultant heating and melting of the core.

d) 95% stator earth fault protection: Inverse time voltage relay connected
across the secondary of the high impedance neutral grounding transformer
relay is used for protection of around 95% of the stator winding against earth
fault.

::s81 P agr.