RG005001

RG005001
RG005001

Line distance protection REL670

Exercise 2 - Distance protection operate
times
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Exercise 2 - Distance protection operate times

Copyright
This document and parts thereof must not be reproduced or copied without
written permission from ABB, and the contents thereof must not be imparted to
a third party, nor used for any unauthorized purpose.
The software or hardware described in this document is furnished under a
license and may be used, copied, or disclosed only in accordance with the terms
of such license.

Trademarks
ABB is a registered trademark of ABB Group. All other brand or product names
mentioned in this document may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their
respective holders.

ABB AB
Substation Automation Products
SE-721 59 Vsters
Sweden
Telephone: +46 (0) 21 34 20 00
Facsimile: +46 (0) 21 14 69 18

www.abb.com/substationautomation

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Exercise 2 - Distance protection operate times

Distance protection operate times

On completion of this exercise you should be able to

Verify the operate times of the distance protection zones for single fault types

Understand the behavior of the distance protection operate times for evolving faults

Perform relay tests to verify the above situations

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Exercise 2 - Distance protection operate times

Distance protection operate times for single fault types

The operate time of the distance protection zones has been indirectly tested in the previous exercise, as usually
relay test equipment make use of the operate time of the zone to recognize that a fault occurs in the correct zone.
However, characteristic tests are border tests, and the operate time of the relay can be higher than the typical one
if tested close to its border.
In order to test the operate times faults inside the distance protection characteristics are injected.

Relay settings
Keep the same relay settings you have from the previous exercise.

Injection tests
1. Connect the test set to REL670
Connect the three voltage generators and the three current generators of the test set to the REL670. The same
connections of the previous exercise are valid.
2. Open the Omicron test file simulating Phase-earth faults
The test file is called REL670 LE Operate times.adt and it contains phase-earth faults inside each distance
protection zone.
The file is available in the folder Files for SEP-602A REL670 / OMICRON TESTS on the desktop of your
training PC.
3. Run all the tests and measure the operate times
Figure 1 shows the test results for the single phase to earth faults.

Figure 1: Operate times for phase-earth faults

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Exercise 2 - Distance protection operate times

4. Open the Omicron test file simulating phase-phase faults

The test file is called REL670 LL Operate times.adt and it contains phase-phase faults inside each distance
protection zone.
The file is available in the folder Files for SEP-602A REL670 / OMICRON TESTS on the desktop of your
training PC.
5. Run all the tests and measure the operate times
Figure 2 shows the test results for the phase-phase faults.

Figure 2: Operate times for phase-phase faults

6. Open the Omicron test file simulating three-phase faults

The test file is called REL670 LLL Operate times.adt and it contains 3-phase faults inside each distance
protection zone.
The file is available in the folder Files for SEP-602A REL670 / OMICRON TESTS on the desktop of your
training PC.
7. Run all the tests and measure the operate times
Figure 3 shows the test results for the three-phase faults.

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Exercise 2 - Distance protection operate times

Figure 3: Operate times for three-phase faults

Distance protection operate times for evolving faults

REL670 is a distance protection relay that has different timers for each zone and for each fault type. In order to
manage the time selectivity with distance protection relays of different manufacturers, it is necessary to
understand the behavior of the protection when a fault appears in a zone and evolves into a different fault type,
within the same zone. As this is often a remote back-up issue, zone 3 will be used for this example, but the
conclusions are valid for any distance protection zone of REL670.
For this exercise we will simulate the following
with help of the relay test set:
Zone 3 : tPE = tPP = 1 s
1) at time t = 0 one phase-earth fault appears in
zone 3 (1 s operate time for LE faults)
and
2) after 400 ms the fault evolves into a threephase fault, always in zone 3 (1 s operate time
for LLL faults).
The operate time from the beginning of the first
earth-fault will be measured.

Figure 4: Evolving fault inside zone 3.

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Exercise 2 - Distance protection operate times

Injection tests
8. Open the Omicron test file simulating the evolving fault sequence
The test file is called REL670 Zone3 Evolving Fault.seq and it contains the following sequence:
pre-fault for 1,2 s Fault L1E in zone3 for 400 ms Fault L1L2L3 in zone3
The file is available in the folder Files for SEP-602A REL670 / OMICRON TESTS on the desktop of your
training PC and the sequence is shown in details in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Sequence for the evolving fault in zone3

9. Run the sequence and measure the operate time

You should measure the operate time from the first fault injection, which means at the beginning of the phaseearth fault.
Notice that the operate time is 1 second and not 1,4 seconds. Figure 6 shows how the operate time of the
distance protection can be measured with help of the sliding cursors.

Figure 6: Operate time for evolving fault within the same protection zone

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ABB AB
Substation Automation Products
SE-721 59 Vsters, Sweden
Phone +46 (0) 21 34 20 00
Fax +46 (0) 21 14 69 18

www.abb.com/substationautomation