UNIT -3

SYMMETRICAL FAULT ANALYSIS

 INTRODUCTION

Faults in Power System

Definition: A fault in an electrical equipment/apparatus is defined as a
defect in the electrical circuit due to which current is diverted
from the intended path.

Nature and Causes of faults

• Faults are caused either by insulation failures or by conducting path

failure.

• Break down may occur at normal voltage due to

(i). The deterioration or aging of insulation

(ii). Accumulation of dust on insulators leads to flashovers

(iii).The damages caused by unpredictable happenings such as:

- blowing of heavy winds,

- tree falling across lines,
- vehicles colliding with towers or poles,
- birds shorting lines, aircraft colliding with lines,
- line breaks,
- ice and snow loading,
- abnormal loading,
- earthquakes,
- direct lightning strokes,
- switching surges etc.
(iv). In the case of cables, transformers, generators and other equipment,
the causes of faults are:

- failure of the solid insulation due to aging,

- heat, moisture or over voltage,
- mechanical damage,
- accidental contacts with earth or earthed screens,
- flashover due to over voltages etc.

(v). Circuit breakers may trip due to errors in the switching operation,
testing or maintenance work, wrong connections, defects in protective
deices, faulty system design etc.
 Types of Faults in Power System
Series faults
(Open conductor)
Voltage, frequency
increases and
current decreases

Three phase fault L-G L-L L-L-G

Shunt faults
(short circuit)
Voltage, frequency
decreases and current
increases

5

Series Faults (Open Conductor Faults)

• When the circuits are controlled by fuses or any device which does not
open all three phases, one or two phases of the circuit may be opened
while the other phases or phase is closed. These are called series
faults.

• Series faults are characterized by increase in voltage and frequency

and fall in current in the faulted phases.

• It is observed in practice that most of the open conductor faults sooner

or later develop into some or the other short circuit faults. However,
there are some instances where an open circuit can have dangerous
consequences like CT secondary is open circuited and field circuit of
DC Machine open circuited etc.

Shunt Faults (Short Circuit Faults)

• Short circuit faults are basically due to failure of insulation. The

weakening of insulation may be due to one or more of the following
factors:
Ageing,
Temperature,

Rain, hail, storm,

Chemical pollution,
Foreign objects and other causes
• Shunt faults are characterized by increase in current and fall in voltage
and frequency .

• Over currents, in general cause over heating and attendant danger of

fire. Over heating also causes deterioration of the insulation thus
weakening It further.
 Faults Statistics
Faults in Various Elements of power System
Element % of Total Faults
Overhead Lines 50
Underground Cables 9
Transformers 10
Generators 7
Switchgears 12
CTs. VTs, Relays Control Equipment, etc 12

Different Types of Faults on Overhead Lines

Types of Faults % of Total Faults Severity
Line to Ground (L-G) 85 Least severe
Line to Line (L-L) 8
Double Line to Ground (L-L-G) 5
Three Phase (3-Φ) 2 Most severe

Effects of Short Circuit Currents

• Heavy short circuit current may cause damage to equipment or any

other element of the system due to over heating and high mechanical
forces set up due to heavy current.

• Arcs associated with short circuits may cause fire hazards. Such fires
resulting from arcing may destroy the fault element of the system.
There is also a possibility of the fire spreading to other parts of the
system if the fault is not isolated quickly.

• There may be reduction in the supply voltage of the healthy feeders

resulting in the loss of industrial loads.

• Short circuits may cause the unbalancing of supply voltages and

currents, there by heating rotating machines.
• There may be a loss of system stability. Individual generators in a
power station may lose synchronism, resulting in a complete shutdown
of the system. Loss of stability of interconnected systems may also
result. Subsystems may maintain supply for their individual zones but
load shedding would have to be resorted in the sub system which was
receiving power from the other subsystem before occurrence of the
fault.

• The above faults may cause an interruption of supply to consumers,

there by causing a loss of revenue.

Objectives of Short Circuit Studies

• To determine maximum and minimum three phase short circuit

currents.

• To determine the un symmetrical fault current for single and double

line-to-ground faults, line-to-line faults and some times open circuit
faults.

• Investigation of the operation of protective relays

• Determination of rated rupturing capacity of circuit breakers.(Fault

current If , fault MVA is frequently used as a rating. The fault MVA
often referred to as the fault level).

• To determine fault-current distribution and bus bar voltage levels during

fault conditions.

Symmetrical Fault Current Calculation Methods

CASE1 : Symmetrical fault current calculation when the Synchronous

machine under no-load.
Solution Methods: (i). Thevenin’s Equivalent circuit method
(ii) Z-bus building Algorithm

CASE 2: Symmetrical fault current calculation when the Synchronous

machine on –load.
Solution Method: Voltage behind transient reactance/ Internal voltages

CASE 3: Symmetrical fault current calculation for fault limiting reactors.


Synchronous Machine Transient Analysis

Synchronous Machine Transient Analysis
• Under normal operating conditions, the relative position of the rotor axis
and the resultant magnetic field axis is fixed. The angle between the
two is known as the power angle or torque angle.
• The synchronous machine consists of three stator windings mounted
on the stator, and one field winding mounted on the rotor. Two
additional fictitious windings could be added to the rotor, one along
direct axis (Xd) and one along the quadrature axis (Xq), which model the
short-circuited paths of the damper windings.

• However, under short circuit conditions, the circuit reactance is much

greater than the resistance. Thus, the stator current lags nearly л/2
radians behind driving voltage and the armature reaction mmf is
centered almost on the direct axis. Therefore, during short circuit, the
effective reactance of the machine may be assumed only along the
direct axis.
• Consider a three phase short circuit occurs at the armature terminals.
Assume the short circuit is applied at the instant when the rotr direct
axis is along magnetic axis of phase a, i.e δ =0. also assume that the
rotor speed is constant at synchronous value.
• Armature currents in the various phases vary with time in a rather
complicated way. Analysis of the wave forms shows that they consist
of
- A fundamental frequency component
- A dc component
- A double frequency component
• The three phase short circuit wave form shows that the ac component
of the armature current decays from a very high initial value to the
steady state value. This is because the machine reactance changes
due to the effect of the armature reaction.

• At the instant prior to short circuit, there is some flux on the direct axis
linking both stator and rotor, due to only to rotor mmf if the machine is
open circuit, or due to the resultant of rotor and stator mmf if some
stator current is flowing.

• When there is a sudden increase of stator current on short circuit , the

flux linking stator and rotor can not change instantaneously due to eddy
currents flowing in the rotor and damper circuits, which oppose this
change.
• Since, stator emf is unable at first to establish any armature reaction,
the reactance of armature reaction is negligible, and the initial
reactance is very small and similar in value to the leakage reactance.

• As the eddy current in the damper circuit and eventually in the field
circuit decays, the armature reaction is fully established.

• The armature reaction which is produced by a nearly zero power factor

current provides mostly demagnetizing effect and the machine
reactance increases to the direct axis synchronous reactance.

• From the above analysis a useful picture can be obtained by thinking of

the field and damper windings are the secondary's of a transformer
whose primary is the armature winding.
• During normal steady state conditions, there is no transformer action
between stator and rotor windings of the synchronous machine as a
result field produced by the stator and rotor both revolve with the
same synchronous speed.
• This is similar to a transformer with open-circuited secondary's. For this
condition the primary may be described by the synchronous reactance
Xd.
• During disturbance, the rotor speed is no longer the same as that of
the revolving field produced by stator windings in transformer action.
• Thus, field and damper circuits resemble much more nearly as short –
circuited secondary's. the equivalent circuit for this condition, referred to
the stator side is shown in figure.
• The Equivalent reactance is known as the direct axis sub transient
reactance is

• For a two pole turbo alternator Xd’’ may be between 0.07 and 0.012
p.u., while for hydro alternator the range may be 0.1 to 0.35 p.u
• The direct axis sub transient reactance Xd’’ is only used in calculations
if the effect of the initial current is important, as for example, when
determining circuit breaker short circuit rating.
• Typically, the damper circuit has relatively high resistance and the
direct axis short circuit sub transient time constant is very small,
around 0.035 second.
• Thus, this component of current decays quickly. It is then permissible to
ignore the branch of the equivalent circuit which takes account of the
damper windings, and the equivalent circuit reduces to that of the
figure shown

• Ignoring the winding resistances, the equivalent reactance of the figure

known as the direct axis short circuit transient reactance is
• The direct axis transient short circuit reactance Xd’ may lie between
0.10 to 0.25 p.u. the short circuit transient time constant is usually in
order of 1 to 2 seconds.
• The field time constant which characterizes the decay of transients with
the armature open-circuited is called the direct axis open circuit
transient time constant. This is given by
• Typical values of the direct axis open circuit transient time constant are
about 5 seconds. The relation is given as
• Finally, when the disturbance is altogether over, there will be no
hunting of rotor, and, hence there will not any transformer action
between stator and rotor, and the circuit reduces to following figure.

• The equivalent reactance becomes the direct axis synchronous

reactance, given by
• Obviously Xd’’<Xd’<Xd . The synchronous machine reactance and time
constants are provided by the manufacturers. These values can be
obtained by a short circuit test.
 Fault Limiting Reactors
• Reactor is a coil which has high inductive reactance as compared to its
resistance and is used to limit the short circuit current during fault
conditions.
• To perform this function it is essential that magnetic saturation at high
current does not reduce the coil reactance.
• If an iron core d inductor is expected to maintain constant reactance for
currents two to three times its normal value it will turn out to be very
costly and heavy. Therefore air cored coils having constant inductance
are generally used for current limiting reactors.
• Air cored reactors are normally of two types:
(i). Oil immersed type
(ii). Dry type.
• Oil immersed reactors can be cooled by any of the means used for
cooling the power transformer where as the dry type are usually cooled
by natural ventilation and are some times designed with forced-air
and heat exchanger auxiliaries. Reactors are usually built as single
phase units.

Location of Reactors
(i) Generator reactors, (ii) Feeder reactors, (iii) Bus-bar reactors
• The above classification is based on the location of the reactors.
Reactors may be connected in series with the generator in series with
each feeder or to the bus bars.

(i). Generator reactors,
• The reactance of the modern alternators may be as high as 2.0 p.u.
which means even a dead short-circuit at the terminals of the alternator
will result in a current less than full load current and, therefore no
external reactor is required to limit the short circuit current of such
machine.

Disadvantages
• In the event of a fault occurring on a feeder, the voltage at the
remaining healthy feeders also may loose synchronism requiring
resynchronization later.
• There is a constant voltage drop in the reactors and also power loss,
even during normal operation. Since modern generators are designed
to with stand dead short circuit at their terminals, generator reactors are
now-a-days not used except for old units in operation.

(ii). Feeder reactors
• The per unit value of reactance of a feeder based on its ratings may be
small but when compared with the rating of the whole system its value
is quite large and hence a small reactor will be effective in limiting short
circuit currents should a fault occur close to the generating station.
• In case this feeder reactor is not there, a fault in such a location would
bring the bus bar voltage almost down to zero value and there is a
possibility of various generators falling out of step.

Disadvantages
• Voltage drop and power loss still occurs in the reactor for a feeder fault.
However, the voltage drop occurs only in that particular feeder reactor.
• Feeder reactors do not offer any protection for bus bar faults.
Nevertheless, bus-bar faults occur very rarely.
• As series reactors inferably create voltage drop, system voltage
regulation will be impaired. Hence they are to be used only in special
case such as for short feeders of large cross-section.

(iii). Bus bar reactors
• In both the above methods, the reactors carry full load current under
normal operation. The consequent disadvantage of constant voltage
drops and power loss can be avoided by dividing the bus bars into
sections and inter connect the sections through protective reactors.
There are two ways of doing this.
• (a) Ring system :
• In this method each feeder is fed by one generator. Very little power
flows across the reactors during normal operation. Hence, the voltage
drop and power loss are negligible. If a fault occurs on any feeder, only
the generator to which the feeder is connected will feed the fault and
other generators are required to feed the fault through the reactor.
• (b) Tie-bar system: This is an improvement over the ring system. This
is shown in Fig. Current fed into a fault has to pass through two
reactors in series between sections.
• Another advantage is that additional generation may be connected to
the system without requiring changes in the existing reactors. The only
disadvantage is that this systems requires an additional bus-bar
system, the tie-bar.
 Selection of Circuit Breakers
• Two of the circuit breaker ratings which require the computation of short
circuit current are
i. rated momentary current
ii. rated symmetrical interrupting current
• Symmetrical short circuit current is obtained by using sub transient
reactance for synchronous machines.
• Momentary current is then calculated by a factor of 1.6 to account for
the presence of DC off-set current.
Circuit breaker speed Multiplying factor
8 cycles or slower 1.0
5 cycles 1.1
3 cycles 1.2
2 cycles 1.4
• Rated interrupting MVA (three phase) capacity =
√3 |V(line)|rated x |I(line)|rated interrupting current
where
V(line) is in kV
I(line) is in kA
thus, instead of computing the short circuit current to be interrupted, we
compute three-phase short circuit MVA to be interrupted. Where
SC MVA (3-phase) = √3 x pre fault line voltage in kV x SC current in kA
• If voltage and current are in per unit values on a three phase basis
SC MVA (3-phase) = |V| pre fault x |I|SC x (MVA) Base
obviously, rated MVA interrupting capacity of a circuit breaker is to be
more than (or equal to) the SC MVA required to be interrupted.