MODELLING AND

SIMULATION OF INVERSE
TIME OVERCURRENT RELAY
USING MATLAB/SIMULINK
Muhd Hafizi Idris, Nur Hazwani Hussin,
Melaty Amirruddin, Mohd Saufi Ahmad,
Mohd Alif Ismail, Farrah Salwani
Abdullah, Nurhakimah Mohd Mukhtar

School of Electrical System Engineering,

Universiti Malaysia Perlis Arau, Perlis,
Malaysia
INTRODUCTION
 Overcurrent relay can be used as main
or backup protection to protect the
transmission or distribution feeders,
transformers, bus coupler etc.
 When it is used to protect the feeders
and transformers, it normally will be
coordinated in sequence so that the
relay nearest to the fault location will
operate first.
INTRODUCTION
 Fault current is measured in multiples of
current setting or pickup current.
 When used in coordination with other
overcurrent relays such as to protect
radial feeders, it can be coordinated
with upstream or downstream relays
easily by the use of Time Multiplier
Setting (TMS).
SCOPES OF PROJECT
 The purpose of this research is to model, simulate
and evaluate inverse time ovecurrent relay using
Matlab/Simulink software.
 If the results prove the feasible use of the software
to model and simulate the relay, the model can be
extended to be used in further research in the
future.
 Matlab/Simulink is chosen because of the
widespread use of this software as research
platform and its’ capability to model power system
components.
 To ease the modelling of the relay, the model has
been simplified and bounded by limitation where
only standard inverse (SI) curve was modelled and
simulated in this research.
 THEORIES OF INVERSE
TIME OC RELAY

Operating time equations for all types of inverse time overcurrent relay
THEORIES OF INVERSE
TIME OC RELAY
Characteristic curves for all types of
inverse time overcurrent relay

Pickup current:
MODELLING &
SIMULATION

Power system network and relay setting parameters

MODELLING &
SIMULATION
 The CT ratio been chosen is 1200/1 A depending
on the value of calculated full load current.
 The PS parameters for phase and earth faults are
different where PS for phase fault normally set
higher than full load current.
 PS for earth fault normally set lower than full
load current to detect high impedance fault
when involving ground fault which normally
undetected by phase overcurrent relay.
 The TMS for both phase and earth faults are set
to the same value.
 In this model, only Standard Inverse (SI) curve
used to detect phase and earth faults.
 MODELLING &
SIMULATION

Overall model of power system network with inverse time OC relay

 MODELLING &
SIMULATION
 The network chosen is a simple spur
transmission line.
 For EF subsystem, the input to it is the phasor
summation of red, yellow and blue currents
where when there is a ground fault, there will
be residual or imbalanced current flow to the
earth.
 Subsystem from any phase or earth will send
the trip signal faster than others when the
current to it is higher than others.
 All phases and earth subsystems will compute
the operation time depending on the value of
fault current entering them.
MODELLING &
SIMULATION

Block properties for

phase and earth
subsystems

Blocks inside OC Relay subsystem

MODELLING &
SIMULATION

Blocks inside each

phase and earth
subsystems

 All phase and earth subsystems represent the

equation for SI curve.
 The timer only will be started when the fault
current is higher than the pickup current.
 When the timer elapse (more than) the
calculated operation time, trip signal will be sent.
SIMULATION RESULTS
 All faults were initiated at 0.5 s.
 Two types of fault which are single line to ground (SLG)
fault and line to line (LL) fault were taken to be studied.
 Faults were simulated at different locations, FL and with
different fault resistances, Rf to vary the value of fault
current.
 The results which were focused are the operation
times, top for all phases and earth detectors and
whether the fault current, If for each phase and earth is
higher than the pickup current, Ip or not.
 From the relay setting parameters, Ip for each phase
and earth were calculated as follows:
SIMULATION RESULTS

Overall simulation results

 Case 1 to 3 are for SLG faults (RG)

 Case 4 to case 6 are for LL faults (RY).
SIMULATION RESULTS
 For case 1, it can be seen that both red
phase and earth detected the fault due to
low fault resistance (1Ω) and both fault
currents exceeded the pickup currents.
 However, the operation time was faster
for earth detector compared with phase
detector because the multiple of earth’s
fault current over pickup current
(2061/480 = 4.294) was higher than for
phase (2604/1440 = 1.808).
 Thus, the breaker was isolated and tripped
at 2.204 s (≈ 0.5 s + 1.692 s = 2.192 s).
SIMULATION RESULTS
SIMULATION RESULTS
 For case 2, the fault currents for both red
phase and earth detectors were smaller
compared with case 1.
 This was because the fault location for case
2 (in km) was greater than case 1 although
the fault resistance value was the same,
thus the impedance for the fault current to
flow was higher.
 However, both phase and earth fault
currents still greater than each pickup
current and the breaker was tripped at
3.0041 s (≈ 2.487 + 0.5 s = 2.987 s) by the
trip signal sent by the earth fault detector.
SIMULATION RESULTS
 For case 3, the fault location was still the
same with case 2.
 However, the fault resistance was increased
to 40 Ω.
 It can be seen that, fault currents for both
phase and earth detectors dropped
significantly.
 Only the earth detector sensed the fault
because the fault current was still greater
than pickup current.
 The breaker was tripped at a very long time
which was 23.4691 s (≈ 22.831 s + 0.5 s =
23.331 s).
SIMULATION RESULTS
 In case 4, a fault was introduced which
connected between red and yellow phases of
the line.
 From the results, fault current at red phase was
higher than yellow phase.
 No fault current flow to the earth because it was
not a ground fault.
 Breaker was tripped at 4.5068 s (≈ 4.132 s +
0.5 s = 4.632 s) by the red phase detector.
Although there was operation time calculated
by earth detector, the trip signal was not sent
by earth detector because the fault current was
too low (≈ 0) compared with its pickup current.
SIMULATION RESULTS
SIMULATION RESULTS
 With the same fault resistance as case 4,
fault location was changed to 40 km for
case 5.
 It can be seen that both fault currents at
red and yellow phases decreased.
 However, both red and yellow phase
detectors still can detected the fault
currents because both fault currents more
than pickup current for phase detector.
 The breaker was tripped at 6.8849 s by
red phase detector (≈ 6.352 s + 0.5 s =
6.852 s).
SIMULATION RESULTS
 Finally for case 6, fault location was
maintained at 40 km but fault resistance
was increased to 20 Ω.
 It can be seen that fault currents for
both red and yellow phases dropped
quite significantly.
 Fault current for yellow phase dropped
below the pickup current for phase fault.
Thus, only red phase detector sensed
the fault and sent the trip signal.
 CONCLUSION
 The inverse time overcurrent relay was successfully
modeled and simulated using Matlab/Simulink software.
 This shows that the software is capable to be used to
model any type of relays.
 However, because Matlab is equation solver based
software, the simulation time is depending on the
complexity of the model.
 Higher complexity of the model will take longer time for the
simulation to finish.
 Appropriate simulation solver must be chosen to reduce
the simulation time.
 The model developed in this research can easily be
extended to other types of curve such as extremely
inverse, very inverse, and long time inverse.
 Besides that, definite time feature also can be added to
limit the operation time when fault current is too high.
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