Protection and coordination study

Coordination is the selection and setting of protective devices in order to isolate only the portion of the system where the abnormality occurs. Coordination is a basic ingredient of a well-designed electrical distribution protection system and is compulsory in certain health care and continuous process industrial power systems. The system protection is one of the most initial and essential features of an electrical network and should be considered concurrently with all other essential features. Too often system protection is considered after all other design features have been determined and the basic system design has been established. Such an approach may result in an unsatisfactory system that cannot be adequately protected, except by a disproportionately high expenditure. The designer should thoroughly examine the question of system protection at each stage of planning and incorporate into the final system a fully integrated protection plan that is capable of, and is flexible enough, to grow with the system. The isolation of short circuits and overloads requires the application of protective equipment that senses when an abnormal current flow exists and then removes the affected portion from the system. The three primary protective equipment components used in the isolation of short circuits and overloads are fuses, circuit breakers and protective relays.

Objectives of Protection and coordination study:

  • Limit the extent and duration of service interruption whenever equipment failure, human error, or adverse natural events occur on any portion of the system
  • To minimize damage to the system components involved in the failure
  • To establish the appropriate settings for equipment such as relays and releases to ensure proper coordination
  • Finding the fault clearing time of the protective devices

Protection and Coordination Execution:

  • Gathering all the required inputs such as, Single line diagram, equipment parameters, impedance data, system fault level, grid X/R ration, Relay and release catalogues.
  • Modelling the system as per the input data collected from the customer
  • Short circuit study is performed since it is a pre requisite for this study to determine the fault level for relay coordination
  • Calculation of setting parameter and coordination of protective devices using ETAP Star view for Over current and Earth fault protection
  • To verify the Coordination of the protective devices, sequence of operation is performed using a inbuilt ETAP tool
  • Preparation of final report with recommendation if necessary

Result of Protection and Coordination Study:

  • Detailed report explaining the input data, system configuration, observations and recommendations
  • Fault current at various branches and buses in the network
  • Optimum protective device settings
  • Time vs current coordination curves
  • Fault clearing time is obtained which is a input to Arc flash study

Reference Standards:

  1. IEEE 399 – Recommended Practice for Industrial and Commercial Power System Analysis
  2. IEEE 242 – Recommended Practice for Protection and Coordination of Industrial and Commercial Power Systems
  3. IEEE 3004 Series Standards