Primary and back-up protection

The reliability of a power system has been discussed in earlier sections. Many factors may cause protec­tion failure and there is always some possibility of a circuit breaker failure. For this reason, it is usual to supplement primary protection with other systems to 'back-up' the operation of the main system and ensure that nothing can prevent the clearance of a fault from the system.
 

Back-up protection may be obtained automatically as an inherent feature of the main protection scheme, or separately by means of additional equip­ment.

Time graded schemes such as over current or distance protection schemes are examples of those providing inherent back-up protection; the faulty section is normally isolated discriminatively by the time grading, but if the appropriate relay fails or the circuit breaker fails to trip, the next relay in the grading sequence will complete its operation and trip the associated circuit breaker, thereby inter­rupting the fault circuit one section further back. In this way complete back-up cover is obtained; one more section is isolated than is desirable but this is inevitable in the event of the failure of a circuit breaker.

Where the system interconnection is more complex, the above operation will be repeated so that all parallel infeeds are tripped.
 

If the power system is protected mainly by unit schemes, automatic back-up protection is not obtained, and it is then normal to supplement the main protection with time graded over current pro­tection, which will provide local back-up cover if the main protective relays have failed, and will trip further back in the event of circuit breaker failure.

Such back-up protection is inherently slower than the main protection and, depending on the power system configuration, may be less discriminative. For the most important circuits the performance may not be good enough, even as a back-up protection, or, in some cases, not even possible, owing to the effect of multiple infeeds. In these cases duplicate high speed protective systems may be installed. These provide excellent mutual back-up cover against failure of the protective equipment, but either no remote back-up protection against circuit breaker failure or, at best, time delayed cover.
 

Breaker fail protection can be obtained by checking that fault current ceases within a brief time interval from the operation of the main protection. If this does not occur, all other connections to the bus bar section are interrupted, the condition being necessarily treated as a bus bar fault. This provides the required back-up protection with the minimum of time delay, and confines the tripping operation to the one station, as compared with the alternative of tripping the remote ends of all the relevant circuits.

The extent and type of back-up protection which is applied will naturally be related to the failure risks and relative economic importance of the system. For distribution systems where fault clearance
 

Times are not critical, time delayed remote back-up protection is adequate but for EHV systems, where system stability is at risk unless a fault is cleared quickly, local back-up, as described above, should be chosen.
 

Ideal back-up protection would be completely independent of the main protection. Current trans-formers, voltage transformers, auxiliary tripping relays, trip coils and D.C. supplies would be duplicated. This ideal is rarely attained in practice. The following compromises are typical:

a.   Separate current transformers (cores and secondary windings   only) are used for each protec­tive system, as this involves little extra cost or accommodation compared with the use of common current transformers which would have to be larger because of the combined burden.

b.   Common voltage transformers are used because duplication would involve a considerable increase in cost, because of the voltage transformers them-selves, and also because of the increased accom­modation which would have to be provided. Since security of the VT output is vital, it is desirable that the supply to each protection should be separately fused and also continuously supervised by a relay which will give an alarm on failure of the supply and, where appropriate, prevent an unwanted operation of the protection.

c.  Trip supplies to the two protections should be separately fused. Duplication of tripping batteries and of tripping coils on circuit breakers is sometimes provided. Trip circuits should be continuously supervised.

d. It is desirable that the main and back-up protections (or duplicate main protections) should operate on different principles, so that unusual events that may cause failure of the one will be less likely to affect the other.