3/11/2018 External Trip Relays - High/Low Burden - Lockouts - Applications - Rod Hughes Consulting Pty Ltd

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External Trip Relays - High/Low Burden - Lockouts

Rodney Hughes
Last modified 28 Aug 2013

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In principle there is no problem associated with direct tripping of a  
CB by the protection relay contacts - as with all things you simply Contact Me
need to check you have appropriate contact ratings.
Skype: (ping even if
In the "good old days" there were induction disc type relays where showing offline)
the main operating contact had a limited contact rating or was My status
somewhat delicate so quite often these units had an auxiliary
tripping relay included inside to boost the contact rating and Email Me
endurance.
A phone call is nearly
This also had the advantage of giving more than one contact so you always welcome
could trip the breaker and give an alarm to SCADA.  Of course you depending on the time of
could put that aux trip relay "anywhere" - inside or outside of the night wherever I am in the
relay box depending on how many terminals you have available.  world.
The same is true of numerical relays. Based in Adelaide UTC
+9:30 hours e.g.
In some cases you may need to trip several CBs – e.g. busbar
protection so these often have 10 or 20 contacts.  April- Noon
The case for an external tripping relay is when there are multiple September UK =
devices all needing to trip the CB and so you may find it more 2030
convenient for operation and maintenance personnel to be able to Adelaide
just deal with isolating one signal associated with the aux trip relay
than lots of individuals.  These however need to be high-speed trip October- Noon
relays so that overall fault clearance time is not impaired.  High March: UK =
speed in some cases requires an “over-powering” of the coil to get a 2230
lot of flux happening to operate the armature – so there is a resistor Adelaide
in series with the coil that is initially short circuited and so the coil
has a large ‘above rating’ voltage applied to it, and hence a high   Office + 61 8 7127 6357
current pulse to the coil for a short period of 10 ms until the   Mobile + 61 419 845 253
armature operates and opens the shorting contact on the resistor
or by post
which returns the voltage and current on the coil to its rated values. 
  PO Box 757
Because of this high current pulse, we generally call these relays
  Blackwood
high burden trip relays.
  SA 5051
The second application of high burden trip relays is when you have   Australia.
multiple trip sources with one trip output relay – e.g. there may be a
 
diff relay, a buchholz relay, a winding temp relay, a …… relay etc. all
operating the trip relay.  In order to provide flags indicating which
caused the trip relay to operate, it was common practice to use a
series current operated auxiliary relay.  Since you wanted to make
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3/11/2018 External Trip Relays - High/Low Burden - Lockouts - Applications - Rod Hughes Consulting Pty Ltd

sure the trip relay and the respective current operated auxiliary to Extra Notes:
operate, you would use a high burden relay to get enough current
flow in the series relay, even accounting for the possibility that
perhaps there were two or three series relays that had to flag as
they all operated simultaneously
Then we have the issue of high burden trip coils on the CB and also
the possibility of the CB auxiliary contact failure itself.  Most CBs
have one f its own auxiliary contact in series with the trip coil so that
once the CB has indeed opened as a successful trip, the auxiliary
contact cuts off the tripping current and thereby the relay is spared
the necessity to break a high value DC current with inductive L/R
that would sustain an arc across the open contact.  The arc is
generated on the relay contact if the CB aux contact has failed, but
the CB has opened and the main protection resets, this the trip
contact of the trip relay now has to break the trip coil current. This
then uses blow-out magnets that sit on the tip of the trip relay
contacts that force the arc outwards o increase the arc air distance
to extinguish it and this preventing damage to the contacts.
But the issue of Lockout is a bit different.
Lockout is about preventing closing of the CB until a potentially
permanent fault can be checked and verified by personnel on site as
to whether it is safe to close the CB.
These Lockouts are generally provided by contacts on the trip relay
that have to be manually reset by personnel on site – the contact
simply opens circuits the wiring to the close coil of the CB until it is
reset.  In some cases electrical reset is possible but the operation
procedure would normally be that site personnel have to hand reset
the unit but ONLY if the personnel have finished their job left site
but somehow forgot to reset the relay, then and only then, would
the central control room staff be allowed to remotely reset the relay
so they could close the CB.
So when it comes to Lockout it is a special safety issue.  Modern
electronic relays sometimes provide a setting which allows the
output contact to latch and so can be used as a Lockout.  Care must
be taken in checking what happens to this Lockout when the
auxiliary supply to the relay is removed - will it reset as a volatile
output?
What happens when the relay is re-powered up? - will it still be in
the Lockout state?
Is there a delay before it "remembers" the output is supposed to be
latched in a different position as a Lockout. 
Is it necessary/essential the Lockout is retained even though the DC
auxiliary to the relay is removed? e.g. working on te panel but teh
SCADA system may still have control of the CB close coil.

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