IOSR Journal of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IOSR-JEEE)

e-ISSN: 2278-1676, p-ISSN: 2320-3331, Volume 17, Issue 1 Ser. I (Jan. – Feb. 2022), PP 01-06
www.iosrjournals.org

Techniques for Power System Protection and Control

Dr. Mohamed Amer hassan abobmahdi
Faculty of Natural Resources Al.zawiya University

Abstract
Accompany wide area communication has become an intelligent technology, which makes the real-time
interaction between the substations and the wide area protection and control system possible. However, the
present protection and control system to handle this real-time data has been recognized to be deficient. In this
paper begins by reviewing the development history of power system protection, with special attention paid to the
recent development in the field of wide-area and integrated protections, in order to look into the future
development of protection and control systems. New technique for power system protection and control is
proposed. Then the concept of integrated wide area protection and control is introduced, where it can be shown
that a hierarchical protection and control system provides the protection and control for wide area or regional
power substations/plants and their associated power networks. The system is mainly divided into three levels:
the local, the substation/plant, and the wide area/regional. The integrated functions at each level are described
in details with an aim to develop an optimal coordination mechanism between each level. The key element in the
proposed system is the wide area real-time protection and control information platform, which not only enables
the merger of three lines of deface for power system protection and control, but also provides a perfect tool for
the application of cloud computing in substations and power networks.
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Date of Submission: 01-01-2022 Date of Acceptance: 12-01-2022
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I. Introduction
It emerged at the beginning of the last century, with the application of the first electro-mechanical
overcurrent relay. The majority of the protection principles currently employed in protection relays were
developed within the first three decades of the last century, such as overcurrent, directional, distance and
differential protection. The development of modern science and technology, especially electronic and computer
technology, promoted the development of relay technology, such as materials, components and the
manufacturing process of the hardware structure of relay protection device. At the same time, great theoretical
progress had been made in the relay protection software, algorithms, etc. the progress in modern technology
stimulates the development in power system protection. In the last century from the emergence of protection to
the end of the 1990s, the relay protection had gone through a number of development stages, migrating from
electro-mechanical to semiconductor, and subsequently to integrated circuit and microprocessor technologies.
Today, microprocessor-based digital and numeric relays are replacing conventional relays in all areas of power
system protection. However, many of the same relaying principles of protection are still playing a dominant role
to date. In the late 1960s, the application of a centralized substation protection system based on a centralized
computer system was proposed. This constitutes an important milestone in the history of power system
protection. The idea fits well with the concept of an overall integrated protection where the protection package
would not only oversee individual units of a plant but also a section of the network. However, the idea has not
been widely applied until recently, since there were no available computer hardware/software or communication
technologies to support such an idea. Since then, relay technology has enjoyed successful developments based
on the application of digital techniques. The introduction of microprocessors into protection in the 1980s
generally followed the conventional approach with the implementation of distributed processing platforms that
concentrated on protecting individual units of the system. Limited integrated protection was provided in the
form of back-up protection and thus remained a secondary function. Developments in the 1980s and 1990s
provided new means to advance power system protection, especially the ‘Adaptive Protection’ and the Artificial
Intelligence (AI)-based protection techniques proposed in the 1980s and 1990s. The adaptive protection started
with the application of Inverse Definite Minimum Time Overcurrent (IDMT) protection in the early time of
protection history. The concept played an important role in the 1980s with the progress of computing technology
and associated control theory. It can be defined as a new type of relay protection which can change the
performance, characteristics or set value according to the operation mode and fault condition of the power
system. The basic idea of adaptive relay protection is to protect the power system as much as possible to
improve the performance of the protection.

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 Techniques for power system protection and control

Adaptive relay protection has the advantages of improving the response of the system, enhancing the
reliability and improving the economic benefits. It has a wide application prospect in the field of distance
protection, transformer protection, generator protection and so on. Research has discovered that, to achieve the
protection of the system adaptive to the operation mode and fault status, more detailed system operation and
fault information are required through communication network. The 1990s witnessed the rapid development of
electronic and computer technology, the artificial intelligence technology such as artificial neural networks,
genetic algorithms, evolutionary algorithm, fuzzy logic and other research applications, which have been
applied to the field of relay protection. For example, artificial neural network (ANN) is used to achieve fault
type identification, fault distance measurement, direction protection, and so on. Artificial neural network has the
characteristics of distributed storage, parallel processing, self-organization and self-learning. The application of
artificial intelligence will improve the speed and accuracy of fault detection and analysis, which represents the
future development of an intelligent diagnosis system. As a result of these developments, the performance of the
protection relays has been improved. However, these developments have concentrated on the improvement of
conventional relaying techniques, and no significant new relaying principles have been derived from the
application of the Adaptive and AI techniques. At the same time in the 1990s, with the continuous expansion of
the power network, the demand for fast fault clearance to improve system stability encouraged research into non
power system frequency fault detection techniques to increase the speed of the relay response. This led to the
development of the so-called ‘transient based protection’ relays based on travelling wave and superimposed
components, which utilizes the fault generated transients for transmission system protection. Studies have found
that the fault generated high frequency transients can be detected and quantified, creating the possibility for
developing new protection principles and techniques. Considerable effort has now been devoted to research on
high frequency transient detection. Another important milestone is the application of novel communication
technique, the utilization of global positioning system (GPS) in power system protection. In this respect, a
number of new techniques has been proposed. In particular, the new proposed protection relay principle is able
to provide protection for wide area power network. Following the development, the concept of wide area
protection focusing on control aspect has been presented.

II. Recent development in power system protection and control

New technique progress in high-speed communication network and information technology, there were
significant developments in power system protection, power system control and wide area control in recent
years, particularly in the wide-area and integrated protection. Recent development Wide area protection In
recent years, the fast development in communication technologies makes the wide-area information exchange
possible. In this respect, the emergence of the wide area measurement system provides a new idea for the design
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 Techniques for power system protection and control

of power system protection systems. The first wide-area protection principle is derived from the transient based
protection in 1996, in which GPS time synchronization played a major role in the design. This was immediately
followed by a summary paper in 1997, which systematically outlines the concept of the so-called “wide area
protection” , focusing principally on the control aspect of the area. The wide area protection based on novel
algorithms, which is derived from the measurements of multiple information points, is able to provide fast,
reliable and accurate fault clearance, analyse the effects on the system stability based on the fault system
analysis and take necessary control measures to perform the functions of relay protection, security, and stability
control in order to prevent voltage collapse. Wide area relay protection has quickly become a hot research topic
with many research results published particularly in recent years.

III. Integrated protection

With the development of digital technology, more and more protection functions for any given
apparatus (line, transformer, generator, etc.) have been implemented within one protective device to achieve a
certain degree of integration. For example, a numeric line protection relay may have distance or current
differential function as the main protection, and directional and overcurrent functions as the backup protection.
The recent developments in microprocessor and communication techniques provided new means to derive new
protection principles and schemes based on the information obtained from multiple power plants and
components, which could have significant advantages over the existing protection techniques based on the
individual plant or component. Unlike centralized protection (or substation area protection), the integrated
protection does not simply centralize the relay hardware/software, but concentrates on the developments of new
concepts and algorithms based on multiple points of measurements; via this means it is hoped that the
performance of protection can be improved significantly. There was also research in the field of integrated wide
area protection.

IV. New technique and development

Based on the developments mentioned above, a new concept of the integrated wide area protection and
control has been proposed recently. The main focus of the concept is the integration between the protection and
control, particularly at the wide-area or regional level, aimed to provide a number of benefits to the future
protection and control system, e.g., the potential to merge the three lines of defence system and on-line self-
healing decision making, in order to prevent cascading tripping of large area power network. The concept of
integrated wide area protection and control is introduced, in which a three-level hierarchically coordinated
system, supported by the specially designed realtime synchronised wide-area communication network, provides
the protection and control for wide area or regional power substations/plants and their associated power
network. The key element in the system is the integrated wide area protection and control information platform,
which receives real-time synchronised data from the communication network to support the integration of
protection and control at the wide area/regional level. The information platform also supports the application of
a cloud computing system, which is specially designed to implement a number of secondary functions for
substations and power networks. In addition to the basic functions of relay protection, the platform should have
a large capacity of fault information and data storage, fast data processing functions, powerful communication
functions, and other protection, control devices and scheduling network to share the whole system data,
information and network resources, and can also carry out remote monitoring with the computer monitoring
system of substation communication. With the proposed platform, the architecture of future substation
equipment may be reshaped to provide a flexible framework for building an interactive grid and subsequently
improve the reliability and security of power grids. Integrated wide area/regional protection and control
Architecture of integrated wide area protection and control The proposed integrated wide area or regional
protection and control system is illustrated. There have been fast developments in both power transmission and
distribution networks, e.g., the series compensation in AC lines and high-voltage DC lines in transmission
systems, distributed generation and energy storage in distribution systems, etc. These new developments result
in far more complicated characteristics than that of conventional systems. Consequently, the existing protection
and control system will no longer be effective to cope with the new systems, and this has led to the proposed
system. As is shown, the system consists of different equipment at different layers: from bottom to top, there is
the integrated multiple-function intelligent equipment at the local level; the substation communication network
and the integrated substation protection and control at the substation level; the wide area communication
network, the integrated wide area information platform and the integrated wide area (regional) protection and
control at wide area level. The key parts of the system are the high-speed wide area communication network and
the real-time synchronisation information platform. It is further extended to dispatching in order to achieve the
integration of dispatching automation, protection and control of power grid, and according to the three-level
dispatching (country, province, regional) architecture to implement the functions of regional protection, control
and dispatching managements. Multiple functions intelligent equipment at the local level, the Intelligent

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 Techniques for power system protection and control

equipment at local level is an integrated multiple function secondary equipment in the substation, which mainly
consists of the MU, intelligent terminal, metrology measurement, PMU & local protection. The equipment is
responsible for sampling all real-time data and sending information to the integrated substation P&C and wide
area P&C. It also receives and carries out the control commands from the integrated substation P&C and the.
The equipment can be integrated into primary power apparatuses and achieve local protection for 90 % of its
associated line sections. It has a redundant configuration to ensure reliability, together with other integrated
functions such as fault recorder, data storage and network analysis, etc.

Integrated substation protection and control at the substation/plant level

The substation P&C integrates functions of line, bus, transformer protections, switch failure; autoreclosure,
automatic bus transfer, UFLS, UVLS, overload intertripping and substation control function, etc. It utilizes
information from the entire substation to achieve substation backup protection and safety automatic control, etc.
The CBs are used as units to configure the adaptive backup protection, and current differential protection is used
to replace the stage overcurrent protection, breaker failure protection and dead zone protection in the
conventional protection system.

V. Integrated wide area/regional protection and control

The IWAPC specially designed for the protection and control of power network is able to offer fast
protection. In addition, they both integrate functions of automatic UFLS and UVLS, voltage and frequency
control, oscillation detection and out-of-step separation, etc. In addition, the IWAPC also incorporates the
function of transmission cross-section safety P&C. Unlike conventional protection and control, which are
separated in both design and operation, the IWAPC integrates protection and control into one optimal combined
system, which effectively coordinates the wide area (regional) protection and control, in order to achieve
significant improvements in the protection and control of power systems.
Synchronized information platform Substation is installed with a wide range of electrical equipment
with complex designs and is difficult to maintain. With the continuing improvement in power system
automation and the intelligence level, the system network has been expanding, along with the huge amount of
information in protection and control. As each piece of information is collected and stored by different devices
in each separate system, the interoperability of the internal power system data between systems is poor, whereas
complex communication protocols tend to create information islands. Consequently, the measurement data and
protection control mechanism cannot be shared, which restricts the information integration. The protection and
control of smart grid requires dealing with the new situation demands of the application, in order to improve
further the information platform capabilities for the future development of key technologies, and to make the
information platform system more open. The real-time synchronized information platform accurately collects
wide area information and conducts data mining to investigate the logic relation between the real-time
information to increase the sensitivity, reliability and fault tolerance capability. The data received from the
platform includes static, dynamic, transient measurements and states of circuit breakers, etc. Valuable
information is extracted from the data and allocated to various specially-designed computation algorithms in the
platform to perform advanced functions of protection and control for the power network. In the platform, sets of
data need to be transferred and their transferring speed depends on the application, e.g., slow speed for
contingency analysis, near real time speed for monitoring, real time speed for control, and high speed for wide
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 Techniques for power system protection and control

area protection,; in particular, time synchronization. The information can also include other types of data, such
as the oil and ambient temperature of the transformer, wind speed and direction, sun intensity, etc. On the other
hand, the information is stored in a hierarchical manner instead of a centralized one, which comprises the
hierarchical protection and control system. Equipped with the latest high-speed synchronised communication
technology, integrated with the advanced protection techniques and the latest developments in control system,
the system offers not only fast protection, but also complete control of entire power network. The advanced
computing technology is introduced to establish a synchronized information platform for wide area protection
and control, to build a panoramic operation and maintenance data collection network, providing a standardized
interface to the terminal device, to form a resource sharing, flexible and interactive, open and ordered
information platform. In summary, advanced computing technologies are used to build a distributed
collaborative intelligent information platform, simplifying terminal data collection equipment, and breaking the
barriers between protection and control systems at different substations through the specially designed
synchronized information platform.

VI. Wide area power cloud

Based on the information platform mentioned above, a distributed cloud system is designed to
implement functions at substation and regional levels, such as wide area fault location, fault line selection,
power quality monitoring, protection settings, etc. The extended functions also include the equipment
monitoring, life cycle and operation management. Currently, many kinds of secondary equipments achieving
different functions are installed in each substation, and an increasing number of distributed energy resources of
small capacity added to the system greatly increase the number of equipments. To implement these equipments,
complex functions in a specially developed distributed “cloud” system will greatly reduce the equipment
investment. The cloud at substation level receives the data from process level, and the regional cloud receives
the data from the information platform, which includes static, dynamic, transient measurements and states of
circuit breakers, extracting valuable information and allocating them to various specially-designed computation
algorithms in the platform to perform advanced functions in order to identify the faulted line, the accurate fault
location and the contents of harmonics, etc.

The cloud computing platform can make full use of “processing ability of cloud” to reduce the burden
of terminal secondary equipment. Based on big data technique, the computing clouds enjoy strong processing
power based on demand. There is no need for endless upgrades to improve the processing capacity of the
equipment, and there is also no need to update the software to achieve a variety of task processing. There are
many more advantages which can be derived from the cloud system, such as the wide area information sharing,
standardization of software and algorithm, reduction of equipment investment, substation area occupation and
work load for operation and maintenance.

VII. Conclusions
This technique presents an integrated wide area protection and control system based on a hierarchical
structure, which integrates protection and control at local, substation and regional levels. Covering both
transmission and distribution networks, the system is supported by the proposed high-speed synchronised
communication network and the real-time protection and control information platform. The system, which
integrates the advanced protection techniques and the latest developments in control system, offers not only fast

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 Techniques for power system protection and control

protection, but also complete control of the entire power network. It offers a potential for the merger of the three
lines of defence into a unified system to ensure more effectively the reliable and safe operation of power grid.
Based on the system information platform, a distributed power cloud system is also designed to support many
advanced applications for the integrated wide area protection and control. With the continuous advances in
measurement, communication and information technologies, the system presents a bright future for practical
application. Overall improved performance of protection and control can be expected from the proposed system.
However, for the system to become useful in power system application, it is equally important that its practical
implementation be readily manageable, user-friendly and cost-effective. The authors hold that, to achieve these
goals, the proposed integrated protection and control at wide area level offers an appealing way forward.

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Dr. Mohamed Amer hassan abobmahdi, et. al. “Techniques for Power System Protection and
Control.” IOSR Journal of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IOSR-JEEE), 17(1), (2022):
pp. 01-06.

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