2116
4, OCTOBER 2007
Performance Comparison of Distance Protection
Schemes for Shunt-FACTS Compensated
Transmission Lines
Fadhel A. Albasri, Student Member, IEEE, Tarlochan Singh Sidhu, Fellow, IEEE, and Rajiv K. Varma, Member, IEEE
Abstract—This paper presents a comparative study of the per-
formance of distance relays for transmission lines compensated
by shunt connected flexible ac transmission system (FACTS) con-
trollers/devices. The objective of this study is to evaluate the perfor-
mance of various distance protection schemes on transmission lines
with shunt-FACTS devices applied for midpoint voltage control.
The impact of two types of shunt FACTS devices, static var com-
pensator (SVC) and static synchronous compensator (STATCOM)
on the transmission line distance protection schemes is studied for
different fault types, fault locations and system conditions. The
power system elements and the shunt-FACTS devices with their
associated controllers are modeled using RSCAD/RTDS software.
The results are based on the performance of commercial distance
relays using a real time digital simulator (RTDS).
Index Terms—Distance channel aided schemes, distance protec-
tion relay, flexible ac transmission system (FACTS), power system
protection, real time digital simulator, shunt compensation, static
synchronous compensator (STATCOM), static var compensator
(SVC).
I. INTRODUCTION
HE use of flexible ac transmission system (FACTS)
T controllers in power system transmission has been of
worldwide interest in recent years for increasing the power
transfer capability and enhancing power system controllability
and stability [1]–[3]. However, the implementation of FACTS
controllers in transmission systems introduces new power
system issues in the field of power system protection, in partic-
ular the line protection that must be considered and analyzed,
such as, rapid changes in line impedance, power angle, load
currents, and the transients introduced by the fault occurrence
and the associated control action [4]. Furthermore, the response
time of FACTS controllers is fast and might overlap with the
protective device operating time. Therefore, the performance
of a protection system should be carefully analyzed in the
presence of FACTS controllers.
Manuscript received August 8, 2006; revised October 10, 2006. Paper no.
TPWRD-00457-2006.
F. A. Albasri is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
at the University of Western Ontario, London, ON N6A 5B9, Canada, on leave
from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of
Bahrain, Bahrain.
T. S. Sidhu and R. K. Varma are with the Department of Electrical and Com-
puter Engineering, at the University of Western Ontario, London, ON N6A 5B9,
Canada.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRD.2007.900283
0885-8977/$25.00 © 2007 IEEE
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 22, NO.
The location of the shunt-FACTS device depends on the ap-
plication for which it is installed. Shunt compensation FACTS
devices are installed at the end points of transmission lines
(buses) when used for applications, such as bus voltage regula-
tion and improving HVDC link performance, etc. However, for
increasing the power transfer capability of long transmission
lines (tie lines connecting two major grids) midpoint of the lines
is the best location for shunt connected FACTS devices [1].
For this reason, the application of shunt-FACTS for midpoint
compensation of transmission lines is considered in this paper.
Distance protection relays have been widely applied for pro-
tecting transmission lines due to their simple operating principle
and capability to work independently under most circumstances
[5]. Therefore, it is important to study how these distance relays
would perform when protecting a transmission line compen-
sated with FACTS controllers. The effect of series compensation
including series FACTS controllers on the performance of dis-
tance protection relays has been extensively studied [6]–[9]. On
the other hand, only few papers have studied the effect of shunt-
FACTS compensation devices like STATCOM [10], [11] for
midpoint voltage control application in which only a software
model of a single relay for stand-alone distance protection is
considered. Although the voltage controllers and the STATCOM
are reasonably modeled in [11], the paper has not elaborated
on the effect of the FACTS Controller - characteristics, their
control systems (such as the effect of the balanced firing) and
transients behavior during fault on the relay performance. This
paper has also not studied the impact of shunt-FACTS on the
performance of distance protection schemes. It is very impor-
tant to consider the reaction of the FACTS Controller to the fault
when studying the effect on the distance relay performance as
the shunt FACTS controllers (SVC and STATCOM) have fast
response time. This paper considers elaborate models of the
FACTS controllers along with their control systems.
The present work is a continuation to an ongoing research
in this area, part of which was published in [12] and [13]. In
[12], the impact of midpoint shunt-FACTS compensated line on
the performance of only a stand-alone single distance relay is
studied using EMTDC/PSCAD. In addition, some results for
the performance of a single commercial relay at one bus ter-
minal are presented for only SVC compensated system. In [13],
the performance of only one channel-aided scheme was studied
with no consideration for the communication channel delay. In
both [12], [13], the effect of the fault resistance was ignored. The
objective of this paper is to present the issues that could affect
the performance of stand-alone and five channel-aided schemes
ALBASRI et al.: PERFORMANCE COMPARISON OF DISTANCE PROTECTION SCHEMES
Fig. 1. Single line diagram of the study system.
of distance protection when applied for midpoint shunt-FACTS
compensated transmission line using modern commercial re-
lays at the two line ends, and test relay performance using real
time digital simulator (RTDS/RSCAD) [14]. The effects of both
communication channel delay and the fault resistance are con-
sidered in this paper.
The paper is organized as follows. First, a brief description of
the system model is given in Section II. Section III provides a
description of the testing setup for evaluating the performance
of the distance commercial relays using RTDS. The impedance
calculation in the presence of shunt compensation is described
in Section VI. The results of the performance of the commercial
relays in the presence of the shunt-FACTS controllers are given
in Sections V and VI for the non-pilot and five standard channel
aided distance schemes, respectively. Finally, the conclusion is
presented in Section VII.
II. SYSTEM MODEL
The effect of the dynamics of the SVC and STATCOM
FACTS controllers including their associated control systems
on the performance of distance relays are studied using the
RSCAD/RTDS software. The study system, and the modeling
and tuning of the shunt-FACTS controllers are described in this
section.
A. Study System
A power system model with the facility to vary the system
strength, fault location, type of fault, load flow and direction of
load is used so that all possible conditions can be simulated and
studied. Fig. 1 shows the single line diagram of such a system
model considered for the analysis. The distance relays are lo-
cated at station A and B, on Line I. The FACTS Controller is
connected at the midpoint of the transmission line I. The system
data is shown in Table VIII.
B. FACTS Controller Model
For the dynamic simulation study, 12 pulse SVC/STATCOM
is considered. The power rating of the FACTS controllers is se-
lected from load flow studies such that it can regulate the mid-
point voltage at 1 p.u. and provide sufficient compensation for
all conditions of loading and system strength. A slope of 3%
2117
Fig. 2. Simplified faulted network for the study system in Fig. 1.
is employed in their characteristic. The FACTS controllers are
connected to the transmission system via an interfacing trans-
former as shown in Fig. 1.
A three phase balanced firing scheme is adopted for the
FACTS controllers. This implies that all the three phases are
fired at the same angle but 120 apart. Necessary filters have
been provided in the FACTS controllers to limit the effects of
system resonance and other harmonics [1], [2]. The SVC and
STATCOM are operated in voltage control mode to maintain
the voltage at their point of connection at 1 per unit voltage
during normal operating conditions.
Due to the RTDS hardware limitation, it was not possible
to model the 24-pulse voltage source converter (VSC) for the
STATCOM and, hence, the dead period is set at 7.5 in order
to minimize the total harmonic distortion and get an output that
is comparable to the 24-pulse VSC [13].
C. FACTS Controller Tuning
A proportional-integral (PI) controller is used as a voltage
regulator for voltage control application. The parameters of the
PI controller are selected based on the step response perfor-
mance of the controllers for a step in the reference voltage. The
design requirements of the PI controllers is to achieve an over-
shoot of less than 15%, a rise time of less than 1 cycle and a
settling time of 2 to 3 cycles [2]. In this study, the control circuit
is tuned for both the weak and strong system conditions to give
reasonable performance for each system condition. This is done
to ensure that the FACTS controllers perform best for the two
tested system configurations (weak and the strong). A step re-
sponse of 10% change in the controller voltage reference is used
for tuning the PI controller of the STATCOM and SVC. Under
the weakest system condition, the maximum percentage over-
shoot is 10.6% and 11.5% of the step change for the STATCOM
and SVC controllers, respectively. The settling time at which the
error reduced to a value within 1% of the steady state value is
2.8 cycles and 3.4 cycles for STATCOM and SVC, respectively.
III. IMPEDANCE CALCULATION WITH SHUNT COMPENSATION
This section presents the mathematical analysis of the ef-
fect of shunt compensation on the apparent impedance seen by
the relay for midpoint shunt compensation transmission system.
Fig. 2 shows the simplified network of the study system given in
Fig. 1 for a fault at the second section of the compensated line
(line 1). The apparent impedance seen by the distance relay will
be derived for both single-phase-to-ground (SLG) and three-
phase faults in the following subsections.
2118
A. Single Phase–Ground Fault (SLG)
The sequence voltages at the relay point for SLG fault after
the shunt compensator device (fault location, ) can be
expressed as
(1)
where
1, 2, or 0; a suffix denotes the sequence component;
sequence voltage at the relay location ( , ,
);
fault location from the relay to the fault point in
per unit of the total line length;
sequence current of the shunt device;
sequence currents at the relay location;
sequence current in the fault resistance;
fault resistance;
sequence components of the line impedance.
The voltage at the relay location is obtained by adding the
three sequence components from left-hand side of (1) which
lead to (2) after simplification
(2)
where and is the
zero sequence current compensation factor. The line positive
and negative sequence impedances are assumed equal
.
The ground measuring unit of a distance relay uses the
phase voltage at the relay location and the corresponding
phase current suitably compensated by the zero-sequence cur-
rent , so that it correctly measures the positive sequence
impedance of the line. As a result, the apparent impedance seen
by the ground distance unit is given as
(3)
where . The shunt-FACTS device would also affect the second term
Therefore, using (2) and (3), the apparent impedance seen by
the ground distance unit of the relay is given by
(4)
The zero-sequence current of the shunt compensation device
shown in (1) can be eliminated due to the fact that there
will be no zero-sequence current injection as a result of using
delta connection at one side of the coupling transformer for the
shunt FACTS devices (SVC and STATCOM). Therefore, (4) can
be reduced to (5)
(5)
B. Three-Phase Faults
Similarly, the apparent impedance seen by the relay for three-
phase fault can be derived and only the final equation is given
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 22, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2007
for brevity
(6)
where is the line voltage and is the corresponding
line current.
C. Apparent Impedance Error
Examining (5) and (6), the first term represents the
line impedance to the fault point for solid fault with no mid-
point shunt compensation. Therefore, the error in the apparent
impedance introduced as a result of the shunt compensation and
the fault resistance is given as
(7)
The first term in (7) represents the error in the measurement of
the apparent impedance due to the shunt FACTS device whereas
the second term represent the error due to the fault current in
the fault resistance. The error due to the shunt-FACTS is pro-
portional to the fault location and the ratio of the current
in the shunt FACTS device and the relay . The posi-
tive value of this current ratio, as a result of current injection
by the FACTS device, would lead to higher impedance seen by
the relay, which would result in relay under-reach. As a result,
the STATCOM is expected to introduce a larger under-reaching
effect compared to that due to the SVC. This is because of the
inherent capability of the STATCOM to provide its maximum
current at any system voltages down to 0.15 pu, in contrast to
the SVC, which can supply a diminishing output current at low
system voltage determined by its capacitive reactance. On the
other hand, the negative value of the current ratio would result
in relay seeing fault at a closer location than the actual fault loca-
tion and hence would lead to an overreaching effect. This would
occur if the shunt-FACTS absorbed the reactive current instead
of injecting current.
in (7) because the fault current is comprised of the shunt-
FACTS current in addition to the currents of the two end
sources, ( , ). As a result, a higher contribution of the current
injection of the shunt-FACTS in the fault current would result in
a higher impedance error given by (7) leading to a higher degree
of relay under-reaching effect. This would affect the operation
of the relays at the two end-terminals of the shunt-compensated
line. The relay at the remote end of the line will be only af-
fected by the fault resistance, the second term of (7). The effect
of the fault resistance on the performance of commercial relays
in the presence of shunt-FACTS compensation will be also high-
lighted in Section V.
The directionality is not an issue for midpoint shunt compen-
sated lines as compared to series capacitor compensated lines.
This is because the security margin against voltage reversal is
further enhanced by half of the line impedance in addition to
the source impedance behind the relay in case of memory and
cross-polarization of directional elements or polarized mho re-
lays.
ALBASRI et al.: PERFORMANCE COMPARISON OF DISTANCE PROTECTION SCHEMES
Fig. 3. Commercial relay testing setup using RTDS.
IV. REAL TIME DIGITAL SIMULATION (RTDS) STUDY
The simulation results shown here are based on the
performance of commercial distance relays for midpoint
shunt-FACTS compensated transmission lines under different
fault and system conditions using RTDS. The RTDS simu-
lator is a fully digital electromagnetic transient power system
simulator used for conducting closed loop testing of physical
devices and control equipment. The performance of both the
basic distance (non-pilot) and five standard channel-aided
distance schemes are tested using commercial relays.
A. Test Setup Using Commercial Relays
The experimental setup is shown in Fig. 3. The power system
shown in Fig. 1 and the FACTS controllers associated with their
control systems are modeled in the RTDS using RSCAD soft-
ware.
The distance relays can be connected to the RTDS through
the inputs and outputs interfaces of the RSCAD. Relays re-
ceive signals of the three phase currents and voltages at the
corresponding bus from the RTDS test system. Each relay re-
turns a trip contact input to the RTDS test system, which causes
the corresponding circuit breaker within the RTDS model to
open and thereby affecting the simulation in real time. In ad-
dition, other internal elements in the relays, such as status of
the asserted zones and the channel-keying signals (permissive/
blocking), were connected to the digital inputs of the RTDS by
using the available relay outputs. This facilitates monitoring of
these signals in real time along with the other signals such as
the voltages, currents; circuit breakers status and the relay op-
erating time in the RTDS simulation environment as shown in
Fig. 4.
All faults are applied for a duration of 500 ms (30 cycles) to
accommodate enough time for the relay to detect faults, Zone
2 time delay and circuit breakers operation delay. The fault is
cleared by the operation of the line circuit breakers. The circuit
breakers operation delay is set for 3 cycles (50 ms). If the com-
mercial relay fails to give a trip signal within the maximum fault
duration (500 ms), the relay is declared as failed to operate.
B. Relay Settings
The relay was programmed with three mho zones. The reach
of the instantaneous Zone 1 is set at 80% (240 km) and Zone 2
set at 120% (360 km) with time delay of 20 power cycles. The
reverse looking Zone 3 is set at 50% (150 km) for the Blocking
scheme and 25% (75 km) for other schemes.
2119
Fig. 4. Case of over-reaching condition for a STATCOM-compensated weak
system operating at a 40 prefault load angle in the reverse direction.
It should be noted that the reach Zone 3 element at each line
terminal is set in the reverse direction and overreaches the Zone
2 elements at the opposite line terminal by a sufficient margin.
This is to ensure that the local Zone 3 element detects all faults
that are detected by the remote end Zone 2 and issues a blocking
signal in case of DCB scheme.
C. Performance Criterion
The impact of shunt compensation of the SVC and
STATCOM FACTS controllers on the performance of the
distance protection will be evaluated under different testing
conditions using the following performance criterion.
• Reach Accuracy: The amount of over-reaching or under-
reaching effect as a result of the shunt compensation.
• Speed: The relay operating time may be affected as a result
of the transient behavior of the shunt compensation device.
• Phase selection and directionality: The relay performance
in indicating the correct fault type and directionality of the
fault.
D. Notations and Symbols
The symbols and notations in the tables and figures shown in
Sections V and VI are defined here.
• Zone: The relay zone of operation at which it tripped, is
represented by “I”, “II”, “C” or “X” for Zone 1, Zone 2,
Channel aided or no relay operation cases, respectively.
• Fault Calculation: This represent the fault location calcu-
lated by the commercial relay from the relay location to the
fault point in percentage of the total length of the line (300
km).
• LA: Pre-fault load angle between the two-end power
sources in electrical degrees.
• , : Represent respectively, the resistive and reactive
components of the apparent impedance in Ohms.
• R1, R2: Relay 1 and Relay 2, respectively which are con-
nected at the two ends of the compensated line of Fig. 1.
• LG, LL, 3PH: stands for line-to-ground, line-to-line and
three phase faults, respectively.
• PT, BT: stands for permissive trip and blocking trip signals
respectively.
2120
TABLE I
COMMERCIAL RELAY PERFORMANCE WITH NONPILOT
SCHEME FOR DIFFERENT FAULT LOCATIONS
V. PERFORMANCE OF NONPILOT DISTANCE PROTECTION
The performance of the commercial relays operating with
basic distance scheme (non-pilot) is shown in this section. The
following subsection summaries the results and the issues en-
countered.
A. No Shunt-FACTS Compensation
The performance of the commercial relays, which have been
used in the testing setup, is examined first for the condition of
no shunt-FACTS compensation device in the system to make
sure they perform correctly for all the type of faults and fault
locations. The relays showed correct operation of asserted zone,
fault type and reasonable operating time (1 to 1.5 cycles for
faults within zone 1 reach). The relays have also the feature of
indicating the estimated fault location. The comparison of the
fault location given by the relay compared to the actual fault
location showed an acceptable error for all the tested conditions.
It was observed that the error in fault location varied with a
maximum error of 5% of the line length for faults applied at
the end of the line.
B. Shunt-FACTS Compensation
The commercial relays at the terminals of line 1 are set to
operate as in nonpilot scheme.
1) Under-Reach Effect: The under-reach effect of the SVC
and the STATCOM shunt compensation on the relay perfor-
mance is evident from the results of the commercial relay
as shown in Table I. Relay 2 operated on zone 1 for all the
cases shown in Table I and hence not shown. The result shows
that relay 1 under-reached which resulted in no operation of
relay 1 for all AG faults for the SVC and STACOM com-
pensated system in both weak and strong system condition.
The results also demonstrates the higher under-reach impact
of the STACOM compared to that of the SVC compensated
system, which agrees with the mathematical analysis given in
Section III. This is indicated by no relay operation for all fault
types at 100% of the line in case of STATCOM compensated
system whereas it tripped on zone 2 for both phase-phase and
3-phase faults in case of SVC compensated system. However,
when fault extended to 107% of the line, relay 1 did not operate
for all type of faults in case of SVC compensated weak system.
This can be attributed to the nature of the STATCOM -
characteristics compared to that of the SVC as explained in
Section III-C.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 22, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2007
TABLE II
COMMERCIAL RELAY PERFORMANCE WITH NONPILOT SCHEME FOR 3-PHASE
EXTERNAL FAULT IN A STATCOM COMPENSATED WEAK SYSTEM
2) Over-Reach Effect: There was no case of relay
over-reaching condition noted for the SVC regardless of the
system strength, pre-fault loading and fault conditions. Relay
over-reaching was observed only for STATCOM compensated
weak system at a condition of 3-phase faults at high pre-fault
loading condition (40 and 60 ). Fig. 4 shows the performance
of the distance relays for non-pilot scheme with STATCOM
compensated weak system for a 3-phase fault at 125% of
the compensated line (out-of-section fault) and operating at a
pre-fault power angle of 60 in the reverse direction. In this
case, relay 1 overtripped on zone 1 in 40 ms. This is a severe
over-reach condition which can also lead to relay over tripping
for external faults even for relays with channel aided schemes
as it will be shown in the next section. Table II show some
cases of relay 1 over-reach condition for 3-phase faults under
STATCOM compensated weak system and a pre-fault power
in the reverse direction. The relay operating time in which the
relay overtripped is 37 ms to 40 ms, whereas the fault location
estimated by the relay was in the range from 73 to 81%
3) Effect of Shunt-FACTS Transients: The shunt-FACTS
Controller will influence both the steady state impedance seen
by the relay as well as the transient trajectory of the impedance
seen by the distance relay. The steady state effect results in
over and under-reach error with respect to the settings of the
relay zone reach. Whereas, the transient effect could cause
either delayed pickup of the impedance elements of the relay
or cause a series of pickup and drop-off of the relay impedance
elements, both of which may lead to relay delayed operation,
as it will be explained in the following paragraphs.
Fig. 5 shows the digital signals and the per-unit midpoint
voltage at the SVC location for BC external fault at 105% of the
compensated line for a weak system. The digital signals show
that only zone 2 element picks up. However, it undergoes a tran-
sition of short pickup and drop-off for several times before it
resets completely once the SVC boosts the midpoint voltage to
the set point and hence changes the voltage at the relay location.
The operating time of the distance relay is also impacted by
the shunt-FACTS operation at the midpoint of the transmis-
sion system for both SVC and STATCOM compensated sys-
tems. An example of delayed tripping is observed for both SVC
and STATCOM compensated weak system operating at prefault
loading condition of 60 in the reverse power direction and with
AG faults at 65%. In this case, relay 1 takes 102 ms to trip on
zone 1 for the SVC case whereas it takes 147 ms for similar
condition at STATCOM compensated system. This represents
about 6 to 8 cycles of relay operating time which is absolutely
unacceptable for zone 1 operation. A similar case of delayed
tripping of zone 1 for relay 1 operation is shown in Fig. 6 for a
STATCOM compensated weak system in which relay 1 trips on
zone 1 after 115 ms. Other cases of delayed tripping on zone 2
ALBASRI et al.: PERFORMANCE COMPARISON OF DISTANCE PROTECTION SCHEMES
Fig. 5. Relay operation and the midpoint voltage for the BC fault at 105% in
an SVC-compensated weak system operating at a 40 prefault load angle.
Fig. 6. Case of delayed tripping of zone 1 for a BC fault at 65% in a STATCOM
compensated weak system for a prefault load angle of 40 .
are also observed. An example is a case of LL fault with weak
system loaded at 20 degree and compensated with STATCOM
wherein the relay 1 took 424 ms to trip on zone 2 which is more
than 5 cycles of delay compared to the setting of zone 2 time
(20 cycles). In this case, zone 2 of relay 1 picked up first for 54
ms and then dropped off for 11 ms and then picked up again for
396 ms during which Zone 2 time elapsed and relay 1 tripped
on zone 2. In some other case, a delay of more than 9 cycles was
also observed in the tripping of zone 2.
4) Phase Selection: There were several cases of incorrect
phase selection indicated by the commercial relay compared
to the applied fault type. The relay gave incorrect phase selec-
tion for some cases for which the shunt-FACTS Controller is
present in the fault loop and during high prefault loading con-
dition with unsymmetrical faults. However, no case of incorrect
phase selection was observed for relay 2, which is located at
the remote end. Most of incorrect phase selection was observed
for unsymmetrical faults. This may be attributed to the balanced
three-phase firing technique employed in the voltage controllers
of the shunt FACTS devices in which control system acts on
a dc voltage equivalent to the measured three-phase voltage.
Thus for unsymmetrical faults, in which faulty phases experi-
ence a severe undervoltage compared to the healthy phases, the
FACTS device would provide equal compensation for all the
three phases. This means that healthy phase(s) voltages can in-
crease due to this equal compensation. As a result, the overcom-
pensation of the healthy phases can result in an increased reac-
tive current in healthy phases. This would increase the possi-
bility of incorrect phase selection for unsymmetrical faults, par-
ticularly if the relay installed uses current based phase selection.
No case of relay phase selection was observed for light prefault
load of 20 .
2121
TABLE III
EFFECT OF FAULT RESISTANCE ON THE COMMERCIAL RELAYS PERFORMANCE
FOR LINE-GROUND FAULTS AT 60% OF LINE 1
C. Effect of Fault Resistance
The performance of the commercial relays is also tested for
fault conditions involving fault resistance for shunt-FACTS
compensated strong and weak systems. The fault resistance is
varied from 0 to 50 ohms and a line-to-ground fault is applied
at 60% from relay 1 location (i.e., within zone 1 reach of the
two end relays) and for 20 prefault load angle (LA) in forward
and reverse power flow directions. The performance of the
commercial relays is shown in Table III.
When the shunt-FACTS is not installed as indicated by the
row with FACTS device “OFF”, the relays at the two ends of
the compensated line tripped on zone 1 for range of fault re-
sistance from 0 to 50 ohm. However, when the shunt-FACTS
device is connected in the circuit, the operation of the com-
mercial relays at the two ends gets affected due to the in-feed
current of shunt-FACTS in the fault resistance. This results in
larger apparent impedance seen by the relay at both the ends
of the compensated line. Hence, the shunt-FACTS current in-
jection results in under-reaching wherein both relay either fail
to operate or tripped on zone 2 in some cases as the fault re-
sistance increased. It can be seen that relay 2 tripped on zone
2 as indicated by the highlighted cells in Table III. This will
affect the relay operations for channel-aided schemes incorpo-
rating the under-reaching zone for keying such as PUTT and
DUTT scheme. It is also noted that the impact on relay 2 is less
because the impedance error is only due to the fault resistance
given by the second term of (7). This result supports the anal-
ysis given in Section III on the effect of fault resistance with the
presence of shunt-FACTS.
VI. PERFORMANCE COMPARISON OF
THE PILOT PROTECTION SCHEMES
The commercial relays are connected by a communica-
tion link and set to operate under five channel-aided schemes
namely: the direct under-reach transfer trip (DUTT), permissive
under-reach transfer trip (PUTT), the permissive over-reach
transfer trip (POTT), directional comparison blocking (DCB),
and the directional comparison unblocking (DCUB) schemes.
In practice, the time delay introduced by the communication
channel varies depending on the type of the channel. As a re-
sult, the performance of the five channel-aided schemes is tested
for 0, 0.5 and 1 cycles of communication channel delay. More
than 3600 test cases were performed to test the performance
of the channel-aided schemes, considering three type of faults
2122
TABLE IV
RELAY 1 OPERATION FOR INTERNAL FAULTS AT 20 (FORWARD)
TABLE V
RELAY 1 OPERATION FOR INTERNAL FAULTS AT 40 (REVERSE)
(LG, LL and 3PH), different pre-fault loading condition (20
and 40 ), two power directions (forward and reverse), different
fault locations (internal and external faults), three communica-
tion channel delays (0, 0.5, and 1 cycle), two system strength
conditions (strong and weak systems) for both STATCOM and
SVC compensated systems.
The performance of the commercial relay 1 for the five
channel aided schemes are shown in Tables IV–VII for dif-
ferent fault type, fault location, pre-fault loading, system
strength and power directions. The tabulated results show only
the status of relay 1 operation for channel delay of 0.5 and 1
cycles for the sake of simplicity due to pace limitation. For all
the tested cases shown in the table, relay 2 operated correctly
on zone 1 for the internal faults, and hence not shown in the
results. We have only shown the zone of operation at which
the relay tripped and other results such as relay trip time, fault
location estimated by the relay, and the fault type indicated by
the relays are not shown due to the space limitation.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 22, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2007
TABLE VI
RELAY 1 OPERATION FOR EXTERNAL FAULTS
TABLE VII
SUMMARY OF THE NUMBER OF NO RELAY OPERATIONS OF RELAY
1 FOR INTERNAL FAULTS BEYOND THE SHUNT-FACTS DEVICE
A. Influence of Internal Faults
As it was mentioned in Section V that the shunt-FACTS cause
either short time pickup or no pickup of the distance elements
even for some internal faults within zone 1 reach, which caused
the failure of the relay to trip, or trip after zone 2 time delay.
Unlike the non-pilot scheme, which would fail to trip if the
zone 1 element did not pickup or if the zone 2 element picked
up for a time shorter than its settable time delay, the channel
aided schemes performed better under such conditions. As a re-
sult, the overall performance of the channel-aided schemes is
much improved compared to that of the stand-alone distance
protection. Among the five channel-aided schemes, the DUTT
performed well compared to the other schemes for the internal
faults. This is because the shunt-FACTS has no effect on the
remote end relay (R2) for internal solid faults located after the
shunt-FACTS Controller with respect to relay 1 (i.e., between
the shunt-FACTS location and relay 2). For these fault loca-
tions, relay 2 tripped correctly on zone 1 and hence initiated
direct transfer trip to relay 1. This shows that DUTT provides
high dependability compared to the other schemes. However,
the DUTT can also fail to trip under high fault resistance as
shown in Table III in which zone 1 of relay 2 did not pickup.
Similarly, the performance of the PUTT will be affected for
faults involving fault resistance as it uses the under-reaching
zone 1 for keying compared to the other schemes. In such fault
condition, zone 1 might not pickup (as indicated in Table III)
and hence the remote end relay will not operate accordingly. In
addition, the DUTT scheme has the lowest security as it is does
not provide additional verification of faults and hence suscep-
tible to incorrect tripping for channel noise or incorrect transfer
trip signal from the remote end. Extending the reach of zone 2
from 120% to 150% would solve some of the cases for which
relay 1 did not operate for LG faults in schemes utilizing the
overreaching Zone 2 element for channel keying, such as POTT
ALBASRI et al.: PERFORMANCE COMPARISON OF DISTANCE PROTECTION SCHEMES
and DCUB. However, this was not sufficient to clear faults at
the end of the line in which relay 1 also failed to operate.
B. Influence of External Faults
Table VI shows the results for external faults for both 0.5 and
1 cycle channel delays. All the schemes showed similar per-
formance for external faults. However, the main concern is the
over-reach effect of the STATCOM, which causes relay 1 to trip
on zone 1 for 3-phase fault at the adjacent line taking about 40
ms to trip as shown in Table VI for the 40 loading. This leads
to maloperation of relay 1 regardless of the protection scheme
used. Relay 2 did not operate because the fault occurred behind
its forward zones.
The under-reach effect of the shunt-FACTS device also influ-
enced the backup distance protection (Zone 2). It is noted from
Table VI that for fault at 100% of line 1, relay 1 did not trip
for all types of faults in case of STATCOM compensated strong
system whereas it did not trip for LG faults in case of SVC com-
pensated system. Similarly, for the weak system condition, relay
1 did not operate for faults within zone 2 reach (for fault at 105%
of line 1) for all types of fault in case of STATCOM compen-
sated line whereas it did not operate for both LG and 3-phase
fault in case of SVC compensation as shown in Table VI. For
faults beyond 108% of line 1, relay 1 did not operate regardless
of the fault type, prefault load, and the shunt-FACTS device.
C. Influence of Fault Type
It is observed that relay 1 did not operate for most of the LG
faults indicating severe under-reaching effect compared to the
other fault types. This causes no pickup of the over-reaching el-
ement Zone 2 and hence results in the failure of protective relay
to clear the faulted line for all the schemes except the DUTT
scheme, which does not require a local qualifying signal upon
the receipt of a transfer trip signal from the remote end relay.
For the line-to-line (LL) faults, the five protection schemes
clear the faulted line successfully for all the tested cases for SVC
compensated system. Whereas for similar fault in a STATCOM
compensated system, several cases of no relay operations are
observed at fault locations 75% and beyond for weak system
and from 85% for the strong system as shown in Tables IV and
V. These conditions of relay failure to trip for internal LL faults
are observed for all the schemes except the DUTT.
Although not shown in the results of Tables IV–VII, very few
cases of no relay operations are noted for the three-phase in-
ternal faults. There are six such fail operations which occurred
only in a STATCOM compensated strong system protected with
the DCB scheme and with channel delay of 0.5 and 1 cycles.
These cases are shown in Table VII, which give the summary of
all cases of no relay operation for the internal faults. These cases
occurred for 3-phase faults at the end of the line (99%) when the
channel coordination time delay is set at 1.25 cycle. When the
communication coordination time is reduced from 1.25 cycles
to 0.75 cycles, the relay cleared the fault by channel-assisted
tripping. This shows the impact of the communication coordi-
nation time setting of the relay in DCB scheme.
2123
D. Influence of Shunt-FACTS Device Type
It is noted that the under-reach effect due to SVC is less as
compared to that with the STATCOM. As a result, there are
more cases of no relay operation for system with STATCOM
compensated system compared to that with the SVC compen-
sated system. The over-reaching effect, which is observed for
STATCOM compensated weak system, caused overtripping for
external faults. As expected, this led to incorrect relay opera-
tion regardless of the schemes used. Under such condition, ad-
ditional security measures should be considered or zone 1 ele-
ment should be either restrained or time delayed with additional
cross check signals. The over-reaching was also noted for in-
ternal 3-phase faults at the end of the line. An example of this
case is the tripping of relay 1 on Zone 1 for 3-phase fault at
95% for STATCOM compensated weak system under 1 cycle
channel delay, whereas it tripped on channel-aided scheme for
SVC compensated system as shown in Table VI.
E. Influence of Relay Location
The results show that relay performance is affected only
whenever the shunt-FACTS devices fall in the faulted loop.
As a result, relay 1 on the local end (station A) is impacted by
the shunt-FACTS for faults located beyond the shunt-FACTS
device (beyond the 50% of the compensated line). Whereas for
similar faults, relay 2 operated correctly as the shunt-FACTS
device does not fall within its fault loop at a condition of zero
fault resistance. Hence, the performance of relays under the
DUTT scheme superseded the performance of other schemes.
F. Influence of Channel Delay
It is mentioned earlier that there are several cases in which
the Zone 2 picks up for short time during the transient period
of the impedance trajectory. In DCB scheme, the instantaneous
Zone 2 at a local terminal is delayed by a settable communica-
tion channel coordination time delay to allow time for a possible
remote blocking signal to get transmitted to the local terminal.
This settable time delay could affect the relay performance in
case such short pickup of Zone 2 element occurs. So, if the
pickup time of Zone 2 is less than this setting, the relay will
not operate under the DCB scheme whereas it would operate on
other schemes, which do not require such setting. This can be il-
lustrated in Fig. 7 in which Zone 2 of Relay 1 (R1:Z2) pickup for
short time in DCUB scheme which initiated a channel-assisted
tripping of relay 1 whereas it did not trip for DCB scheme due
to the settable communication channel delay time of the DCB
scheme, which is set to 1.25 cycles in this case. In addition, the
carrier coordination time of the DCB scheme results in a longer
fault clearing time compared to the other schemes.
The short time pickup of Zone 2 element due to the
shunt-FACTS devices can also impact the operation of the other
schemes when communication delay is increased. Fig. 8 illus-
trates a condition in which relay 1 operated on channel assisted
tripping in POTT scheme when there is no communication
delay, whereas, it did not operate for similar condition when
the channel delay increased to 0.5 and 1 cycle. It is noted from
Fig. 8 that the difference between the pickup of zone of Relay
1 (R1:Z2) and the assert of the received permissive trip signal
2124
Fig. 7. AG fault at 75% of a STATCOM compensated strong system operating
at power angle 20 (reverse) and with half cycle channel delay. (a) DCUB Scheme
(R1 tripped on channel assisted). (b) DCB scheme (R1 did not trip).
Fig. 8. Digital signals for AG fault at 65%, STATCOM compensated weak
system, 20 (forward), POTT scheme with no channel delay.
(R:PT) is 5 ms. As a result, the relay did not operate when the
channel delay is set to 0.5 cycle (8 ms).
G. Influence of Transient Response of the Shunt-FACTS
The presence of shunt-FACTS in the fault loop of a distance
relay also influences the relay response. The transient response
of the shunt-FACTS is the main factor in delaying the relay re-
sponse. As expected, the DUTT offered the shortest tripping
time compared to the other schemes as it does not require any
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 22, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2007
additional verification at the local end to trip once a direct trip
signal is received from the remote end.
H. Performance of the Distance Relays on Adjacent Lines
The performance of the distance relays of the adjacent line
(line 2 in Fig. 1) is also tested. The relay operated correctly re-
gardless of the schemes used for all the internal faults. For ex-
ternal faults (faults at the compensated line, line 1), the distance
relay performed correctly
I. Overall Performance
The performance of the five schemes in terms of the number
of cases at which each scheme failed to clear the internal
solid fault is summarized in Table VII. It summaries all cases
including those shown in Tables IV–V. It gives the summary of
no trip cases encountered during different operating condition;
namely, two prefault loading conditions (20 and 40 ), two
power directions, two systems (weak and strong), three channel
delay conditions (0, 0.5 and 1 cycles) and five different fault
locations (from 65% to 99%).
As can be seen from Table VII, the majority of cases of no
relay operation occurred during the LG faults followed by LL
faults. The only cases of relay failure to operate for 3-phase in-
ternal fault were observed in the DCB scheme as a result of the
communication coordination time delay setting of its instanta-
neous Zone 2 element.
The performance of the DUTT schemes is the best among the
schemes as it does not require a qualifying signal locally and
just depends on the tripping of the remote relay which is less af-
fected by the shunt-FACTS device for fault beyond the FACTS
location. The DCB scheme is most affected by the shunt-FACTS
compared to the other schemes, as it requires a delay of the in-
stantaneous Zone 2 element, which is not required by the other
schemes. The PUTT, POTT and DCUB schemes have almost
the same number of unsuccessful fault clearing conditions be-
cause they use the overreaching Zone 2 element for qualifying
the received permissive signal. However, the performance of the
PUTT scheme is most affected by the fault resistance compared
to the other schemes as it uses the under-reaching Zone 1 for
keying. Similarly, the DUTT scheme will be affected by the
fault resistance as it also uses Zone 1 for transfer trips to the
other relay. The STATCOM caused larger under-reach, which is
manifested as higher number of no relay operations for internal
faults in the STATCOM case as compared to the SVC case.
VII. DISCUSSION
Although this paper considers the influence of midpoint lo-
cated shunt-FACTS devices, it is expected that installing shunt-
FACTS at the end of the line would reduce the severity of the im-
pact on distance relays in particular for channel-aided schemes
for internal faults. This is because the shunt-FACTS device will
not be included in the faulted loop for internal faults and the cur-
rent of the shunt-FACTS device can be easily compensated at
the relay location where the FACTS device is connected. How-
ever, for STATCOM compensated lines, care should be given
for the possible overreach as this could lead to relay overtrip-
ping for external faults. The impact will be more on the Zone 2
and Zone 3 reach of the distance relays.
ALBASRI et al.: PERFORMANCE COMPARISON OF DISTANCE PROTECTION SCHEMES
TABLE VIII
STUDY SYSTEM DATA
Generally, the basic principle of most commercial distance re-
lays is same regardless of the relay manufacturer. However, they
may have additional features and logics that distinguish them
from one to another. For example, the distance relays that use
weak infeed echo feature in POTT scheme would perform much
better than those which do not implement this feature provided
that a delayed tripping is acceptable. The objective in this paper
is to investigate as many general issues as possible that can pos-
sibly affect the performance of distance protection relays.
VIII. CONCLUSION
The results presented in this paper show the adverse ef-
fect of the midpoint shunt-FACTS controllers, SVC and
STATCOM, on the performance of distance relays for both
stand-alone and channel-aided schemes. The impact of the
midpoint shunt-FACTS compensation on the distance relay
performance results in errors in the impedance measurement
(under/overreaching), delayed response and incorrect phase
selection. Although, the relay with the channel-aided schemes
performed better as compared to the stand-alone scheme, it fails
to provide reliable operation for all types of faults in midpoint
shunt-FACTS compensated transmission system. The DUTT
scheme showed the best overall performance as compared to
the other schemes whereas, the largest number of no relay
operations was encountered for the DCB scheme due to the
channel delay. The over-reaching effect of the STATCOM
caused relay overtripping for external faults regardless of the
distance scheme. The transient introduced by the shunt-FACTS
controllers affected relay response time and the phase selec-
tion of the distance relay which are two important factors for
system stability and single pole tripping applications. There-
fore, it is necessary to find practical solutions to these issues
when applying distance protection for protecting transmission
line with midpoint shunt-FACTS devices. The impact of the
shunt-FACTS devices can be mitigated by many methods,
such as, modifying the logic in the existing channel-aided
schemes, modifying the input voltage and current at the relays
to compensate for the effect of the current of the shunt-FACTS,
detecting remote end breaker operation, etc. The detailed
corrective measures and recommendations will be presented in
another paper.
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Fadhel A. Albasri (S’94) received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical
engineering from the University of Bahrain, Bahrain, in 1992 and 1997, respec-
tively, and is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in power system protection at
the University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada.
In 1994, he joined the University of Bahrain as a Teaching and Research As-
sistant.
Tarlochan Singh Sidhu (M’90–SM’94–F’04) received the B.E. (Hons.) degree
from the Punjabi University, Patiala, India, in 1979 and the M.Sc. and Ph.D.
degrees from the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada, in 1985
and 1989, respectively.
He was with the Regional Computer Center, Chandigarh, India, Punjab State
Electricity Board, India, and Bell-Northern Research Ltd., Ottawa, ON, Canada.
From 1990 to 2002, he was with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Uni-
versity of Saskatchewan, where he was Professor and Graduate Chairman of the
Department. Currently, he is Professor and Chair of the Electrical and Computer
Engineering Department at the University of Western Ontario, London. He is
also the Hydro one Chair in Power Systems Engineering. His areas of research
interest are power system protection, monitoring, and control.
Dr. Sidhu is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers (India) and a Fellow of
the Institution of Electrical Engineer (U.K.). He is also a Registered Professional
Engineer in the Province of Ontario and a Chartered Engineer in the U.K.
Rajiv K. Varma (M’96) received the B.Tech. and Ph.D. degrees from the Indian
Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur, in 1980 and 1988, respectively.
He was a Faculty Member with IIT Kanpur from 1989 to 2001. He subse-
quently moved to the University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada,
where he is an Associate Professor. His research interests are flexible ac trans-
mission systems (FACTS), power system stability, and wind power systems.