IMPORTANCE OF PROTECTION:

An electrical power system consists of generators, motors, transformers, transmission and distribution lines. FAULTS: Short circuits Abnormal operating conditions

A fault free power system is neither economically justifiable nor technically feasible. So, for the protection of the components of the power system, protective schemes are required. The protective scheme includes circuit breakers protective relays To isolate the faulty section of the system from the healthy section.

The protective relay detects any of the faults in the power system and issues necessary commands to the circuit breakers to disconnect the faulty element. Protective relays utilize one or more of the basic electrical quantities such as current, voltage, frequency and phase angle to detect abnormal operating conditions on a power system.

A protective relay does not anticipate or present the occurrence of a fault; rather it takes action only after a fault has occurred.

By insulation failure

By conducting path failures.

The failure of insulation results in short circuits, which are very harmful as they may damage some equipment of the power system.

Opening of conducting paths results in unbalanced operation of the system. Unbalanced currents flowing in rotating machines set up harmonics, thereby heating the machines in short periods of time, So unbalanced operation is not allowed in normal operation of power system.

Sometimes even during the normal operation, circuit breakers may trip due to errors in switching operation, testing or maintenance work, wrong connections, defects in protective devices improving the system design, by employing good quality components and by better operation and maintenance, can reduce occurrence of such faults.

Stator faults

Rotor faults
miscellaneous faults or abnormal operating

conditions

The stator faults includes:

phase

to earth faults phase to phase faults inter turn faults

Most faults occur in the stator windings, of which majority are earth faults. Phase faults & inter faults are less common, these usually develop an earth fault.

The effect of earth in the stator is two fold: I. Arcing to core which welds laminations together causing eddy current hot spots on subsequent occurrence, repairs to this condition involve considerable expenditure of time and money. II. Severe heating in the conductors damaging them & the insulation, with possible fire risks.

Faults in the rotor circuit may be either earth faults or between turns.
1) Loss of excitation 2) Unbalanced three phase faults:

Failure of excitation system is one of the serious abnormal operations of the alternator. It may occur due to the failure or mal operation of a faulty field breaker. The alternator speeds up slightly & operates as an induction generator. Round rotor generators dont have damper windings & hence they are not suitable for such an operation. The rotor is over heated quickly due to heavy induced currents in the rotor iron. Stator also gets over heated due to wattles current drawn by the machine as magnetizing current drawn from the system but slower then rotor heating. A large machine like a Turbo alternator may upset the system stability because it draws reactive power from the system stability because it draws reactive power from the system when working as n induction motor.

The unbalanced operation of the Alternator may arise due to

Fault

in stator winding An unbalanced external fault, which is not cleared quickly Open circuiting of a phase Failure of one contact of the circuit breaker
The unbalanced operation gives rise to negative sequence currents, which rotate in a direction opposite to that of the rotor and hence produced a flux, which sweeps through the rotor with twice the rotational speed. Hence spurious currents of twice the machine frequency are induced in rotor body leading to overheating of the rotor

Many abnormal operating conditions such as over voltage, over speed, High vibration effects, over heating of bearings, auxiliary failure, pole slipping and voltage regulators are referred to as miscellaneous faults.

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