2004 IEEE Intemational Conference on Electric Utility Deregulation, Restructuring and Power Technologies (DRPT2004)April 2004 Hong Kong

Intelligent Method for Protection Coordination

C.W. So, Member, IEEE, K.K. Li, Senior Member, IEEE

Abstract: This paper presents the application of
Artificial Intelligence in protection coordination. It can
substantially improve the coordination of protection
relay operations. The relay settings and coordination
requirements are formulated into a set of constraint
equations and an objective function is developed to
manage the relay settings by the Time Coordination
Method (TCM). Modified Evolutionary Programming
(MEP) is employed to search for the optimum relay
settings with maximum satisfaction of coordination
constraints. The results show that the intelligent
method for protection coordination can optimize the
protection relay settings, reduce relay mis-coordinated
operations, and increase supply reliability. The
efficiency of TCM taking the fault current changes
into consideration is also discussed in this paper.
Index Terms -
Protection Relay Coordination, Time
Coordination Method, Power System Reliability.
I. INTRODUCTION
manage the relay settings. In distribution network, the
major backup protections are Inverse Definite Minimum
Time Lag (LDMTL) overcurrent and earth fault relays.
Their operations depend on the fault current magnitude.
Thus, the relay operation is affected by the change of fault
current magnitude [7]. In fact, any unclear fault will be
cleared by the backup relay operations. Any circuit
breaker operation will result in changes in fault current
distribution and magnitude experienced by backup relays.
In order to boost the performance, the TCM must be able
to handle a reasonable number of fault current changes.
This paper shows how the TCM can significantly improve
the supply reliability and reduce relay mal-operations.
11. PRINCIPLES OF TIMECOORDINATION METHOD
(TCM)
Initialize relay settings

A modem protection system consists of various types Generate new relay settings
of protective relays, which functions to detect and isolate I
system abnormalities swiftly. For various voltage level,
the various combinations of main and backup relays are
installed to provide complete protection to various power
apparatus. The main protection relay works in unit
protection principle and removes in-zone fault instantly.
The backup protection relay is designed to backup the
I Objective value calculation I
main protection relay in case it fails. The overcurrent relay
No
is a major type of backup protection relay. As it is non- E
unit protection, it is discriminated by their operating time,
which forms a sequence of backup relay operations for the
unclear system fault. Any incorrect operation of the
backup relays will result in a large area of supply Fig. 1
interruption [ 11 as well as decreasing the supply reliability. Time Coordination Method
The backup protection relay coordination is thus necessary.
The process flow chart of the TCM is shown in Fig 1.
It ensures that the fault clearance actions are in correct
sequence and minimizes the supply interruption. As the It formulates the power network and protection system
into an objective function and a set of constraint equations.
power system is changing from time to time, the
The objective function in the TCM is shown in equation
coordination work should be carried out upon any
significant change in power system configurations [2]. (1).
Based on the communication ability equipped in modem
digital relay, the coordinated relay settings can be
downloaded through the communication network. The
Time Coordination Method (TCM), which formulates the where
coordination of relay settings into a set of constraint Ri is each relay operation time and regulated by a
equations and an objective function, is proposed in [3] to scale factor a.
The authors would like to thank The Hong Kong Polytechnic
C y is the operation time difference for each pair of
University for supporting the research and publishing this work. relays and regulated by a scale factor p.
C.W. So (e-mail: paulsot~~comnuter.or~) is currently working in CV, is the number of coordination constraint
a PhD project with the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Dr. K.K. Li
(e-mail: cckkli@polwi.cdu,hk) is with the Dcpartment of Electrical
x
violations and regulated by scale factor and 6.
Engineering, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong. Note: Variable i, j and k are iterated for all possible
system configurations.

0-7803-8237-4/04/$17.0002004IEEE
378
2004 IEEE International Conference on Electric Utility Deregulation, Restructuring and Power Technologies (DRPT2004) April 2004 Hong Kong
The initialization is to generate several sets of relay
settings randomly. Each set of relay settings will be
checked against all system constraints and configurations.
The effectiveness of the relay settings is calculated by (1).
Any violation of system constraints will be penalized and
this will be reflected in the increased objective value.
The optimization is used the Modified Evolutionary
Programming (MEP) [ 3 ] to search for the optimum relay
settings. The relay settings improvement process to
produce the next generation is carried out by a sub-process
of MEP called ‘mutation’. It is based on Gaussian normal
distribution noise as shown in Eqn (2).
x, = x, + or N I(0,l) (2)
0, =Jm
where
xi is the i element of relay settings.
pi is the scale factor for EA mutation.
yi is the offset for EA mutation.
@(x’) is the objective value of the relay settings.
N , ( 0 , ~ ) is the Gaussian normal distribution noise.
The scale factor pi and the offset yi are to control the
performance of EA and typically set to 1 and 0
respectively.
These newly generated relay settings should be
passed to constraints checking and objective value
calculation for the next EA generation.
The process will stop after a fixed number of
generations. The number of generations required to carry
out the optimum relay setting depends on the pattern and
the number of initial relay settings.
III. MODIFIED
EVOLUTIONARY
PROGRAMMING
The relay setting coordination is modeled according
to its constraint optimization [ 3 ] . As the relay setting is
discrete and constrained by the adjacent relay, it is
difficult for the conventional gradient search method [5]
to find the solution. The MEP is a stochastic parallel
search method for multi-variables. It can increase the
chances to search for the optimum relay settings in a fixed
number of generations with maximum satisfaction of
coordination constraints. Initialization process is used to
generate several sets of protection relay settings in random
basis to set up the initial population pool. A larger initial
population pool will broaden the solution search area [ 6 ] .
Each initialized protection relay setting is passed to the
Protection Performance Evaluation module for
coordination constraints checking [3]. Unfortunately, the
pure random generated initial protection relay settings
may not pass the coordination constraints checking. The
setting pusher technique [7] is thus developed to improve
the success rate of coordination constraint checking in
379
order to minimize the initialization time. The performance
of EA is determined by population size, number of
generations and mutation rate [SI and will be discussed in
the result section.
IV. FORMULATION
+us BO
Bus B1
Line L5
Bus B7
Circulating current protection relay
Overcurrent protection relay
Fig. 2
Sample distribution system
The sample system as shown in Fig. 2 is considered
in this study. Each circuit is protected by circulating
current (CC) protection, Inverse Definite Minimum Time
Lag (LDMTL) Overcurrent (OC) and Earth Fault (EF)
protection. . The CC protection is a unit protection with a
fixed setting and do not need to be changed adaptively.
The IDMTL OC & EF protection is a non-unit protection.
It operates on excessive current flowing through the
circuit in which the TCM is applied to coordinate the
settings.
The TCM is required to calculate the relay setting for
all possible system configurations. The relay with
optimized settings should be capable to handle the change
of fault current due to the tripping of adjacent circuits [7].
In fact, most of the faults can be cleared by two to three
protection relay operations. For instance, for a busbar fault
occurred on Bus B5, if the relay located at Line L25
operates first, the relays located in other lines will
experience a fault current change. If the relay located in
Line L36 operates next, the relays located in Line L14,
L46, L67, L57 will experience the second change of fault
currents. Finally the relay located in Line L57 operates
and the fault is completely cleared. The relay operation in
Line L36 is definitely a mal-operation. In this case, the
TCM should at least handle all the relay operations up to
two step changes of fault current. It should also be able to
handle other kind of mis-coordinated relay operations
2004 E E E International Conference on Electric Utility Deregulation, Restructuring and Power Technologies (DRPT2004)April 2004 Hong Kong
which will caused fault current changes. In the result
section, the efficiency of the TCM with different number
of fault current changes will be examined. The more
number of fault current changes to be handled, the larger
number of system configurations should be considered.
The possible system configurations are considered as
follows:
For a fault in a particular busbar, the number of
system configurations C to be studied due to the number
of lines N in the system is:
C=2N
The number of system configurations C' if r out of N
circuits will trip to isolate the fault is shown in equation
(4).
(3)
i=O
In the sample system as shown in Fig 2, although the
number of configurations is C=2' =256, but some rare
system configurations may be ignored. If the maximum
allowable circuit outages = 3, the number of system
configurations to process C' = C: + C: + C: + C: = 93 .
The processing time reduction due to the minimized
system configurations is equal to 6- 93 -36,3% . The
C 256
effect of the reduced number of system configuration in
constraint checking will be discussed in the result section.
During the constraint checking, the constraint
violations are checked against whether the operation time
difference between the upstream and downstream relays is
smaller than the coordination margin [3,4]. The objective
value is also calculated during constraint checking. One of
the major objective of the TCM is the minimization of the
number of constraint violations.
V. RELIABILITY
EVALUATION
The benefits of the TCM may be measured by the
supply reliability indices. The basic principle of the supply
reliability is presented by Billinton and Allan [9,10]. The
effectiveness of protection relay operations contributed to
the supply reliability [I 11 may be computed by the three
classic calculations. The first class of reliability
calculation is the stuck breaker and is shown in equations
(4) and (5).
us ( b ) = 'brb (4)
1 ' (b) = ' b (5)
Where
A,, is the failure rate of stuck breaker.
rb is the switching time to restore system due to stuck
breaker.
&(b) is the supply b failure rate due to stuck breaker.
Uv(b)is the supply b restoring time.
The second class of reliability calculation is the
busbar fault and is shown in equations (6) and (7).
380
Where
Afis the failure rate of busbar.
rf is the repair time of busbar.
&(b) is the supply b failure rate due to busbar fault.
Ub(b) is the supply b repair time.
The third class of reliability calculation is the
protection fault and is shown in equations (8) and (9).
U , (b) = Pf ',r, (8)
(9)
Where
A, is the failure rate of the cable.
r, is the switching time of the cable.
Pfis the probability of protection failure.
AJb) is the supply b failure rate due to protection
fault.
U,(b) is the supply b restoring time.
The resultant reliability of the supply b due to
protection operation is shown in equations (lo), (1 1) and
(12).
A (b) = As@) + + &,(b) (10)
U@)= Us@) + Ub(b>4-Up@)
r(b) = U(b)/A (b) [E]
Where
A (b) is the failure rate of supply b.
U(b) is the repair time of supply b.
r(b) is the mean duration of supply b interruption.
The supply reliability for every supply busbar may be
evaluated by simulating the busbar fault, stuck breaker
and protection failure in each busbar. For instance, a
single-phase-to-earth fault occurs at busbar bi, the
protection relay operates according to the fault current
distribution and resulting in busbar bj loss of supply
(bifbj). The supply reliability of busbar bj should be
updated according to equations (6) and (7).The protection
failure and stuck breaker cases are also simulated by
applying busbar fault on the circuit connected to the
busbar and update the reliability indices by equations (4),
(9,(8) and (91). The resultant reliability indices will be
the sum of all individual simulated reliability indices
according to equations (lo), (1 1) and (12).
VI. SIMULATION RESULT
AND DISCUSSION
The relay information and system parameters of the
sample distribution system are shown in Table 1 and 2
respectively.
2004 IEEE Intemational Conference on Electric Utility Deregulation, Restructuring and Power Technologies (DRPT2004) April 2004 Hong Kong

The contribution of constraint violations in objective

value is proportional to the number of system
configurations. Moreover, from the results, the number of
constraint violations depends on the number of fault
current changes, the comparison of the objective value is
only valid for those cases with the same number of fault
current changes, i.e. case 1 to 3 , 4 to 6, 7 to 9, 10 to 12, 13
to 15 and 16 to 18. For cases 1 to 3, they have been
checked based on no fault current change. The TCM then
only checks the relay operations with single and three
phase busbar faults at E31 to B7, i.e. 12 fault cases are
being studied. In cases 16 to 18, the number of system
configurations based on equation (2) for a fault in either
busbar is c = 2 cp
r=O
= 219 . As there are six
busbars in the system and two types of fault are simulated,
a total of 219 x 6 x 2 = 2628 fault cases are to be studied.
Thus, the number of constraint violations for cases 16 to
18 are considerable larger than cases 1 to 13.
When a busbar fault occurred, two or more tripping
should be carried out by OC relay to isolate the fault
completely. For cases 1 to 6, since the number of fault
current changes is less than 2, they are impractical to
implement. The number of constraint violations and the
processing time per generation of cases 7 to 9 are less than
cases 10 to 18. Case 8 has the smallest number of
constraint violations. Case 14 has better reliability indices
Note: All per-unit (pu) values are based on 100MVA. with 0.6160 f/yr and 1.2016 hr/yr. It implies that case 13
to 15 has less chance in loss of supply due to relay mis-
Table 3: Si1 coordination. As the roll of distribution is to provide a
reliable power network to customers, relay settings of case
14 should be the best for retaining the supply reliability.
The performance of MEP depends on the population
size, the number of generations and the number of fault
current changes. For cases 13 to 15, a better objective
value occurs in case 14 for population size of 50 rather
than case 13 or 15, similar behaviors occur in every three
consecutive cases. It implies that population size of 100
may be over-crowed, in which better protection settings
are not easily to be selected to survive during the selection
process in MEP.
VII. CONCLUSION

The TCM can make relays more intelligent and adapt

to the system configuration. The supply reliability can be
improved by reducing the number of mis-coordinated
relay operations. The setting of the TCM with different
number of fault current changes is examined. The result
shows that better improvement of supply reliability do not
occur in larger number of fault current changes. It implies
that the unrealistic number of fault current changes will
cause the TCM to over-test the system and the TCM force
the protection relays to handle those unrealistic system
configurations.

The TCM can be set of different population size, VIII. REFERENCE

number of generations and number of fault current
changes. The results shown in Table 3 are used to [l] R.P. Graziano, V.J. Kruse, G.L. Rankin,
determine the case for the best TCM performance. "Systems Analysis of Protection System Coordination: A
Strategic Problem for Transmission and Distribution

38 1
2004 IEEE Intemational Conference o n Electric Utility Deregulation, Restructuring and Power Technologies (DRPT2004) April 2004 Hong K o n g
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[2] William J. Ackerman, “Substation Automation
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IX. BIOGRAPHIES
C.W. So rcceived the BEng and PhD degree from
the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 1996
and 2001 respectively. He is working as an
Engineer in CLP Power Ltd. in Hong Kong,
responsible for Protection and Substation
Automation. His rescarch interest is power
system protection, the applicahon of artificial
intelligent, substation automation and power
system computer programming
K. K. Li received the M.Sc. and the Ph.D degree
from the University of Manchester Institute of
Science and Technology, Manchester, U.K., and
City University, London, U.K. He is currently an
Associate Professor in the Department of
Electrical Engineering, Hong Kong Polytechnic
University, Hong Kong. His research interests
are power systcm protection and A I applications
in power systems.