Title: Double Bus with Bus Tie Protection

Introduction The electricity consumption for our country has been drastically increased from around 52.42 billion kWh in year 2000 to 93.8 billion kWh in year 2011. This data have proven that there are more parties relying on electricity. Power transmission system is the critical medium to transfer the electricity from utility to end user. Busbars are very critical elements in a power system, since they are the points of coupling of many circuits, transmission, generation or loads. The number of circuits that are connected to a bus varies widely. Bus faults can result in severe system disturbances as high fault current levels are typically available at bus locations and because all circuits supplying fault current must be opened to isolate the problem. Thus, when there are more than six to eight circuits involved, buses are often split by a circuit breaker (bus tie) or a bus arrangement is used that minimizes the number of circuits which must be opened for a bus fault. Furthermore, a high-speed bus protection is often required to limit the damage on equipment and system stability or to maintain service to as much load as possible. The term bus protection refers to protection at the bus location, independent of equipment at remote locations. Most of faults incurred on buses are one phase to ground, bus faults may be caused from different sources and a significant number are inter-phase clear of earth. In fact, a large proportion of busbar faults result from human error rather than the failure of switchgear components. Nowadays, with the advent of fully phasesegregated metal-clad gear, only earth faults are possible, therefore the only worry is the earth fault sensitivity. Otherwise, the ability to detect phase faults clear of earth is an advantage, although the phase fault sensitivity need not be very high. Differential protection is the most sensitive and reliable method for protecting a station bus. The phasor summation of all the measured current entering and leaving the bus must be zero unless there is a fault within the protective zone. For a fault not in the protective zone, the instantaneous direction of at least one current is opposite to the others and the sum of the currents in is identical to the sum out. A fault on the bus provides a path for current flow that is not included in these summations. This is called the differential current. Detection of a difference exceeding the predictable errors in the comparison is one important basis for bus relaying. In dealing with highvoltage power systems, the relay is dependent on the current transformers in the individual circuits to provide information to it regarding the high-voltage currents. The major types of busbar protection are single bus-single breaker, double bus with bus tie-single breaker, main and transfer bus-single breaker, double bus-single breaker, double bus-double breaker, ring bus, breaker-and-a-half bus and bus and transformer-single breaker. In this report, it will focus on double bus with bus tiesingle breaker protection as shown in figure 1.

Figure 1: Typical four-circuit single breaker-double bus with bus tie and the bus differential protection zones

Objectives Basic protection of a busbar is not much different from other components but the key role of a busbar makes two of the requirements the more important: speed and stability. The primary objective of busbar protection is to limit the damage and also to remove busbar faults before back-up line protection to maintain system stability. Formerly, a low impedance differential system was used which had a relatively long operation time of up to 0.5 seconds. However, most modern protection schemes are a differential system capable of operating in a time of the order of one cycle. Of course, the operating time of the tripping relays should be added to this, but an overall tripping time of less than two cycles is achievable. Nowadays with the introduction of high-speed circuit breakers, complete fault clearance may be obtained in approximately 0.1 seconds. The stability of bus protection is very important. It should be noted that rated of fault in busbar are quite low (about one fault per busbar in twenty years). Therefore, a weakness in the stability of a protection system may have detrimental effects on the stability of the protection system. Formerly, this has led to some uncertainty in placing protection system in busbars or placing very sophisticated protection

mechanisms. With better analysis of the system, these systems can be applied with correct settings. To achieve a higher stability index, most of the time two independent measurements are required for tripping command.

Double Bus with Bus Tie Single Breaker Protection Double bus with bus tie protection is an extension of the single bus-single breaker arrangement where in Figure 2 shows the single bus-single breaker circuit diagram.

Figure 2: Typical four-circuit single breaker-single bus and the bus differential protection zone The double bus with bus tie protection is used where a large number of circuits exist, especially at lower voltages, such as for distribution and industrial substations. It provides flexibility when the substation is fed from two separate power supplies. One supply that is connected to each bus permits operation with the bus tie (52T), either open or closed. If one supply is lost, all circuits can be fed by the other, with 52T closed. Separate differential zones for each bus are applied. A fault in one bus zone still permits service to the station by other bus.

Differential Protection for Sectionalized Busbar For separate busbars, each section can be protected separately. However, the zones must overlap so that faults in the common areas are cleared by both zones. The zones of protection are overlapping and their overlap occurs on a circuit breaker, so that it is shared between the two zones. So it is necessary to have CTs on both side of the breaker. When CTs are on both sides of the breaker, all faults can be cleared.

Advantages of Double Bus with Bus Tie Protection 1. Two power sources to feed two buses 2. One source lost, load transferred 3. One bus out, partial service available The advantages of double bus with bus tie type can have two power sources connected to it. If any source found out to have disturbance, another source will supply the power to the downstream. Hence, this type of protection can provide a stable power supply to the feeders that connected to it. Disadvantages of Double Bus with Bus Tie Protection 1. Fault on the busbar all the feeders connected to the busbars should be disconnected 2. When busbar is under maintenance total supply and all feeder should be disconnected 3. Voltage required on each bus 4. Least flexibility and reliability

Conclusion Busbars are the most important component in a distribution network. The efficiency of the busbar on its successful protection is depending on the speed, selectivity and stability.

Reference Switching Schemes or Busbar Arrangements in Substation, Reliability of Substation Configurations, Daniel Nack, Iowa State University, 2005 Theory and Application of Protective Relays, Nima Hejazi Alhosseini Practical Power System Protection, L.G.Hewitson Protective Relaying Principles and Applications, Third Edition, H.Lee Willis