Busbar Protection

In subject area: Engineering

On this page

Chapters and Articles

You might find these chapters and articles relevant to this
topic.

Protection Relays
Omar Salah Elsayed Atwa, in
Practical Power System and Protective Relays
Commissioning
, 2019

18.9.2 Busbar Protection

Busbars are frequently left without protection because it is very
rare to have faults, especially metal-clad switchgear, and it is
protected by backup protection, it can be protected by a separate
busbar protection but it is very expensive due to the cost of CTs
and relays. Also, any false operation will cause the complete
system to trip.

Good busbar protection will have the following features:

Main and check zones;

Block in case of CT open circuited;

Very fast;

Very good stability;

Selective tripping for the faulted section only;

Good isolation facilities and short circuit facilities for CTs

during testing.
Read full chapter

URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128168585000186

Protection
In Electrical Systems and Equipment (Third Edition), 1992

12.7 Busbar protection

Whilst the busbar protection schemes available are perfectly
adequate to cater for phase faults and earth faults, their use
within the CEGB for power station systems has always been the
subject of debate.

Experience indicates that busbar faults are very infrequent. The

busbars are usually air insulated, which itself reduces significantly
the possibility of busbar faults. This supports the view that a
dedicated busbar protection scheme is unnecessary.

The CEGB has not used busbar protection on any 660 MW unit
power station other than Drax where, having been installed in the
late 1960s on the first half, it was repeated for consistency on the
second half. It has been considered for many years that to
introduce a separate form of protection specifically to cover
busbar faults reduces the overall reliability of the electrical
system, since it complicates the protection scheme and increases
the risk of malfunction. This would result in shutting down the
complete switchboard, causing severe operational inconvenience
and would be costly in lost production. This is particularly so for
unit boards, which supply all the motors essential for the running
of the main unit. At 11 kV for example, it would possibly result in
the loss of a boiler feed pump, cooling water pumps, induced
draught and forced draught fan motors and would inevitably
result in the tripping of the main unit. The risk of losing such
strategic items of plant, with the consequential loss of generation,
due to the possible malfunction of a busbar protection scheme is
unacceptable. For this reason, busbar protection is no longer fitted
to auxiliary switchboards in this way.

There is, however, still a need to guard against any faults likely to
affect the busbars. The method adopted to cover for busbar faults
uses the protection arrangements already discussed under
transformer protection, i.e., the standby earth fault protection will
operate for any busbar fault involving earth, and the back-up
overcurrent protection fitted to the HV side of the transformer
will operate for any busbar phase to phase faults. At 415 V, where
busbar faults have been caused by human error when using
multirange instruments, the back-up protection is set down to 150
ms. This can only be achieved by eliminating all forms of
overcurrent protection using inverse time relays on the 415 V
supply system. This method of protection at 415 V is helped
considerably by the design of that system. This is explained in
Section 12.9 of this chapter.

Read full chapter

URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780080405148500197

Protection Relays
Omar Salah Elsayed Atwa, in
Practical Power System and Protective Relays
Commissioning
, 2019

18.9.3.3 BusBar Differential Protection

Three-busbar differential protection is used to protect the busbars
sections separately as different zones, as shown in Fig. 18.9.4.

Figure 18.9.4. Zoned busbar (switchgear) protection.

As shown in Fig. 18.9.4 each section of the busbars is protected by

a separate unit and the trip is confirmed by a check zone which
protects the complete busbar (refer to the above trip logic in Fig.
18.9.4).

This type of busbar protection has two types: low-impedance

biased differential protection and high-impedance differential
protection, as described here.

18.9.3.3.1 Low-Impedance Busbar Prottection

Low-impedance busbar protection uses the Merz-price circulating
current principle for biased differential protection to detect a fault
in the busbar zone, as shown in Fig. 18.9.5.

Figure 18.9.5. Low-impedance biased differential protection for

busbars.
As shown in Fig. 18.9.5, for a fault F1 the relay will trip, but for F2
the relay will be stable due to the effect of the relay restraining
coil. The operating time of this relay is in the range of 20 ms.
18.9.3.3.2 High-Impedance Circulating Current
Protection
Refer to Figs. 18.9.6 and 18.9.7 for a high-impedance differential
protection scheme.

Figure 18.9.6. Simple high-impedance circulating current scheme

with two current transformers.

Figure 18.9.7. External fault in a high-impedance scheme.

V relay=I1×(RCT1+RL1), V relay=IR×R

R=V relay/IR then R=(I1×(RCT1+RL1))/IR

𝑅 = 𝐼1 ×
(𝑅CT1 + 𝑅𝐿1 )
𝐼𝑅 , 𝑅st = 𝑅 − 𝑅 relay

where V relay=voltage across the relay during the external fault F;

Rst=stabilizing resistor; RCT=CT winding resistance; RL=lead
resistance.
For maximum external fault F, the current in relay R is
theoretically zero, where RL1, RL2 are lead resistances, RCT is the CT
resistance, if one CT becomes fully saturated in one side its
secondary EMF will become zero and this can be represented as
short circuited across its magnetizing impedance. This is the
worst case for stability of high-impedance relay and the relay
must be stable under this condition for the maximum external
fault. Under this condition the current I1 will pass through the
relay circuit and the saturated CT–SC branch.

Where IR=relay current setting, R=relay circuit impedance,

Vs=setting voltage, VR=relay voltage,

Then VR=I1 (RCT+RL1)

Adjusting the relay impedance so that the voltage required to

operate the relay is greater than the voltage VR:

𝑉𝑠 > 𝑉𝑅
𝐼𝑅 𝑅 > 𝐼1 (𝑅CT + 𝑅𝐿1 ) then 𝑅 > 𝐼1 / 𝐼𝑅 (𝑅CT + 𝑅𝐿1 )

In order to obtain the required value of R it is usually necessary to

use an additional resistor called a stabilizing resistor (RST) in
series with the relay coil (R) relay, so the required stabilizing
resistor is as follows:

𝑅ST = 𝑅 − 𝑅 relay

In case of an internal fault, as shown in Fig. 18.9.8.

Figure 18.9.8. Internal fault in high-impedance differential

protection relay.

The CT should have a knee point voltage equal to twice the relay
setting voltage, as shown in Fig. 18.9.8. IM is the magnetizing
current taken by the CT at the setting voltage, N is the CT turns
ratio, Im is the current taken by the voltage-limiting device,
Metrosil resistance (nonlinear resistance) at voltage Vs, ISR is the
current taken by the fault setting resistor at the setting voltage,
n=number of CTs in the busbar protection scheme, and Iv is the
current taken by the supervision relay at setting voltage.
Iop is the relay operating current and should be at least 30% of the
minimum fault current to insure relay operation.

18.9.3.3.2.1 Through-Fault Stability Limit

The relay has a stability limit, which is the maximum through-
fault current under which the relay will remain stable.
18.9.3.3.3 Fault Setting Resistor
This fault setting resistor is used to increase the effective primary
fault current by creating a shunt resistance across the relay circuit,
as shown in Fig. 18.9.9.

Figure 18.9.9. Fault setting resistor (Rst).

18.9.3.3.4 Check Zone Feature

As backup protection to confirm the tripping decision, a duplicate
of the primary protection using a second set of CT on all circuits
other than the bus section and coupler units is provided. The
check system is arranged in a similar manner to the primary
protection but forms one zone only, covering the whole of the
busbars and does not discriminate between faults in busbar
sections.

18.9.3.3.5 Nonlinear Resistance (Metrosils

Resistance)
During internal faults of busbars, the high-impedance relay circuit
represents a high burden to CTs, which leads to high voltage on
the relay circuit which can damage the relay, so we use a
nonlinear resistance called Metrosil resistance connected in
parallel with the relay circuit as shown in Fig. 18.9.10, to limit this
voltage.
Figure 18.9.10. Metrosil (nonlinear resistor) of voltage relay in
high-impedance differential protection scheme.
18.9.3.3.6 Busbar Protection Supervision Relay
When a CT is open-circuited the resultant unbalanced current in
the busbar scheme will flow through the parallel combination of
relay, metrosil, fault setting resistor, and CT magnetizing
impedance—this causes the busbar protection to operate for load
or through-fault conditions depending on the effective primary
setting. We use a sensitive voltage operated relay to operate when
there is unbalanced current equal to 10% of the least loaded feeder
connected to the busbars, as shown in Fig. 18.9.11.

Figure 18.9.11. Supervision relay in high-impedance differential

relay busbar protection scheme.

When there is an open circuit in CT1 then the current I1 of CT1

will pass through the magnetizing impedance ZM2 and ZM3 and
the relay total resistance (R relay+Rst)

V supervision=I1 ((R relay+Rst) // ZM2 // ZM3)

The action of this supervision relay after a time delay of about

3 seconds is to give an alarm that the busbar protection is faulty
and to short circuit the buswires to prevent damage to the relay
and stabilizing resistors due to the open circuit condition on one
of the busbar protection CTs.

Read full chapter

URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128168585000186
Protection Relays
Omar Salah Elsayed Atwa, in
Practical Power System and Protective Relays
Commissioning
, 2019

18.9.3.3.6 Busbar Protection Supervision

Relay
When a CT is open-circuited the resultant unbalanced current in
the busbar scheme will flow through the parallel combination of
relay, metrosil, fault setting resistor, and CT magnetizing
impedance—this causes the busbar protection to operate for load
or through-fault conditions depending on the effective primary
setting. We use a sensitive voltage operated relay to operate when
there is unbalanced current equal to 10% of the least loaded feeder
connected to the busbars, as shown in Fig. 18.9.11.

Figure 18.9.11. Supervision relay in high-impedance differential

relay busbar protection scheme.

When there is an open circuit in CT1 then the current I1 of CT1

will pass through the magnetizing impedance ZM2 and ZM3 and
the relay total resistance (R relay+Rst)

V supervision=I1 ((R relay+Rst) // ZM2 // ZM3)

The action of this supervision relay after a time delay of about

3 seconds is to give an alarm that the busbar protection is faulty
and to short circuit the buswires to prevent damage to the relay
and stabilizing resistors due to the open circuit condition on one
of the busbar protection CTs.

Read full chapter

URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128168585000186
Relay Protection
DrC.R. Bayliss CEng FIET, B.J. Hardy CEng FIET, in
Transmission and Distribution Electrical Engineering (Fourth
Edition)
, 2012

10.5.5 Busbar Protection

10.5.5.1 Introduction
Busbar reliability is of paramount importance since failure will
result in the loss of many circuits. In practice, busbar faults are
rare and usually involve phase to earth faults. Such faults may be
due to:

• insulation failure resulting from deterioration over time;

• flashover due to prolonged or excessive overvoltages;
• circuit breaker failure to operate under through fault
conditions;

• operator/maintenance error (especially leaving earths on

busbars after a maintenance operation);

• foreign objects falling on outdoor catenary busbars.

Some electricity supply companies prefer not to

employ busbar protection because they do not wish to
incur the occasional outage due to protection
maloperation which could be more likely than a true
busbar fault which might only occur once in 20 years.
Such a risk may be reduced by employing a separate
‘check’ feature in the busbar protection relay scheme
which must also recognize the fault before tripping is
initiated. In a similar way, in areas of low
thunderstorm activity, an electricity supply company
may decide not to employ outdoor substation
overhead lightning screens because the likelihood that
they may fall and cause a busbar fault is considered to
be more probable than an outage due to a lightning
strike.
10.5.5.2 Frame Leakage Detection
This is the cheapest form of busbar protection for use with indoor
metal-clad or metal-enclosed switchgear installations. Since the
probability of a busbar fault on such modern equipment is very
small, busbar protection on such equipment is only considered for
the most important installations. The switchboard is lightly
insulated from earth (above, say, 10 ohm) and currents in a single
connection to earth measured via a CT and frame leakage relay.
This arrangement requires care to ensure all main and multicore
cable glands are insulated and that bus sections are not shorted
by bolted connections through the concrete floor rebar or
switchgear steel floor fixing channel arrangements (Fig. 10.18a).
To avoid anomalous tripping an additional check feature should
be incorporated when possible by using a CT on the star point
neutral of the supplying transformers. The installation must be in
a dry substation and in practice is not really suitable for
retrofitting on existing switchboards. Equally, care must be taken
in extending switchboards that do already have frame leakage
detection, since some new switchgear types do not permit the
necessary insulating features.

Figure 10.18a. Frame leakage detection.

The frame insulation resistance is effectively in parallel with the
substation main earthing system with typical resistance values to
true earth of less than 1 ohm. The earth leakage relay will
therefore only ‘see’ approximately 9–10% of the earth fault current
when a 10 ohm switchgear-to-earth insulation level is employed.
To ensure stability under external out-of-zone fault conditions the
frame leakage relay may be set at 30% of the minimum earth fault
current.
10.5.5.3 Bus Zone
A comparison is made between the currents entering and leaving
the busbar or busbar zone. CTs are therefore required on all
circuits and the CT locations are arranged to maximize the
required zone of protection coverage as shown in Fig. 10.18b.
Conventionally, main and check high impedance relays are used in
conjunction with these CTs to measure the sum of all the currents.
Very fast operating times (40 msec) are feasible with such
schemes. An example of the practical application of traditional
busbar protection principles is given in Section 10.9.
Figure 10.18b. CT location arrangements and overlapping zones of
protection.
The check feature makes tripping dependent upon two
completely separate measurements of fault current using separate
CTs and different routing for CT wiring to the protection relays. In
a double busbar arrangement a separate protective relay is
applied to each bus section (zones 1 and 2) and an overall check
system arranged to cover all sections of both main and reserve
busbars.

In current practice, schemes based on multiple operating

principles and sometimes based on a distributed concept, are
applied for EHV substations. These schemes are typically low
impedance types and handle differing CT ratios, a high amount of
CT saturation, diverse issues such as evolving faults and CT
remanance. Continuous self-supervision and the ability to detect
abnormalities on CTs, CT wiring and the auxiliary contacts used to
provide a bus image make the scheme complete and highly
reliable, thus obviating needs for a separate set of check zone CTs
and relays.
10.5.5.4 CT Selection
In order to ensure stability under load, switching transient and
external fault conditions the CTs must be all carefully matched up
to the maximum fault level with the same ratio and
characteristics. As explained in Section 10.5.2 it is the voltage
required to operate the relay rather than its current setting which
determines the stability level of the scheme. The CT ‘knee point’
voltage must be kept as high as possible and at least three times
the relay voltage setting. The testing of busbar protection schemes
will therefore necessitate particular care over CT polarities,
correct operation of busbar selector auxiliary contacts and
primary operating current at the selected relay settings.

An interruption in CT wiring will cause an unbalance and

anomalous busbar protection operation. Wiring supervision is
therefore a feature of most schemes in order to raise an alarm
with typical settings of unbalance at 10% of minimum circuit
rating.

See also Section 10.10 regarding optical communication links.

Read full chapter

URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780080969121000101

Relay Protection
DrC.R. Bayliss CEng FIET, B.J. Hardy CEng FIET, in
Transmission and Distribution Electrical Engineering (Fourth
Edition)
, 2012

10.5.5.1 Introduction
Busbar reliability is of paramount importance since failure will
result in the loss of many circuits. In practice, busbar faults are
rare and usually involve phase to earth faults. Such faults may be
due to:

• insulation failure resulting from deterioration over time;

• flashover due to prolonged or excessive overvoltages;
• circuit breaker failure to operate under through fault
conditions;

• operator/maintenance error (especially leaving earths on

busbars after a maintenance operation);

• foreign objects falling on outdoor catenary busbars.

Some electricity supply companies prefer not to

employ busbar protection because they do not wish to
incur the occasional outage due to protection
maloperation which could be more likely than a true
busbar fault which might only occur once in 20 years.
Such a risk may be reduced by employing a separate
‘check’ feature in the busbar protection relay scheme
which must also recognize the fault before tripping is
initiated. In a similar way, in areas of low
thunderstorm activity, an electricity supply company
may decide not to employ outdoor substation
overhead lightning screens because the likelihood that
they may fall and cause a busbar fault is considered to
be more probable than an outage due to a lightning
strike.

Read full chapter

URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780080969121000101
Protective Relays Testing and
Commissioning
Omar Salah Elsayed Atwa, in
Practical Power System and Protective Relays
Commissioning
, 2019

20.6.1 Secondary Injection Test for the

Discriminating Zone
The most used scheme is a high-impedance differential
protection.

1. Pickup test of busbar protection modules

Put the busbar protection out of service during this test—this
means the buswires will be short-circuited and trip links will
be opened.

Inject the current to each module of the busbar protection to

check the pickup value, which should be ±5% of the normal
pickup setting of the relay.

2. Pickup test of the breaker failure module if it is attached to

the Busbar protection system

Inject this module with current and check the pickup value is
within ±5% of the nominal pickup value. This is done after
opening the trip link of the Breaker Failure (BF) system of the
substation.

3. Time test measurement of BF relay

Simulate a BF initiation signal and inject a current above the
relay setting, then allow BF time and check the operation of
the BF trip—normally it is set to 125 ms. Check that the
measured time is ±5% of the time set on the relay.

4. Busbar isolator image test (refer to Fig. 20.6.1).

Figure 20.6.1. Busbar discrimination test of fault location.

A double busbars with a four-section system has one breaker per
feeder.

Check that when D1 for feeder F1 and D3 of feeder F2 are

connected to section C, when we simulate a fault on section C
with D13 and D14, CB7 are closed and CB1 and CB2 are also
closed. This simulates the busbar protection by secondary
injection which will trip CB1, CB2, and C.B7. This discrimination of
the fault location is determined by busbar protection by the bus
isolator image (auxiliary contact from an isolator disconnector,
such as D1, which will inform the relay whether this disconnector
is connected to bus C or not.

By repeating the last procedures for a fault simulation on sections

A–B and C–D with all possible combination of disconnectors
status open or close, we can test the discrimination of the busbar
protection—this means that the busbar protection will trip only
the section which has the fault and leave the other three sections
in service.

Read full chapter

URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128168585000204

Relay Protection
DrC.R. Bayliss CEng FIET, B.J. Hardy CEng FIET, in
Transmission and Distribution Electrical Engineering (Fourth
Edition)
, 2012

10.5.5.2 Frame Leakage Detection

This is the cheapest form of busbar protection for use with indoor
metal-clad or metal-enclosed switchgear installations. Since the
probability of a busbar fault on such modern equipment is very
small, busbar protection on such equipment is only considered for
the most important installations. The switchboard is lightly
insulated from earth (above, say, 10 ohm) and currents in a single
connection to earth measured via a CT and frame leakage relay.
This arrangement requires care to ensure all main and multicore
cable glands are insulated and that bus sections are not shorted
by bolted connections through the concrete floor rebar or
switchgear steel floor fixing channel arrangements (Fig. 10.18a).
To avoid anomalous tripping an additional check feature should
be incorporated when possible by using a CT on the star point
neutral of the supplying transformers. The installation must be in
a dry substation and in practice is not really suitable for
retrofitting on existing switchboards. Equally, care must be taken
in extending switchboards that do already have frame leakage
detection, since some new switchgear types do not permit the
necessary insulating features.

Figure 10.18a. Frame leakage detection.

The frame insulation resistance is effectively in parallel with the
substation main earthing system with typical resistance values to
true earth of less than 1 ohm. The earth leakage relay will
therefore only ‘see’ approximately 9–10% of the earth fault current
when a 10 ohm switchgear-to-earth insulation level is employed.
To ensure stability under external out-of-zone fault conditions the
frame leakage relay may be set at 30% of the minimum earth fault
current.

Read full chapter

URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780080969121000101

The need for frequency control

Andrew Dixon BSc, MSc, PhD, CEng, MIET, MIEEE, in
Modern Aspects of Power System Frequency Stability and
Control
, 2019

1.6.6 The loss of busbars

If busbars, in substations or otherwise, develop faults and are
tripped off the system as a result of the busbar protection, clearly
whatever is connected to the busbar in question would probably
also be tripped off the system. Therefore the loss of a busbar could
indeed also involve the loss of one or more transformers,
generating sets, blocks of demand, and so on, with associated
effects on the system frequency, which needs to be assessed
separately.

Read full chapter

URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128161395000011
Relay Protection
DrC.R. Bayliss CEng FIET, B.J. Hardy CEng FIET, in
Transmission and Distribution Electrical Engineering (Fourth
Edition)
, 2012

10.5.5.3 Bus Zone

A comparison is made between the currents entering and leaving
the busbar or busbar zone. CTs are therefore required on all
circuits and the CT locations are arranged to maximize the
required zone of protection coverage as shown in Fig. 10.18b.
Conventionally, main and check high impedance relays are used in
conjunction with these CTs to measure the sum of all the currents.
Very fast operating times (40 msec) are feasible with such
schemes. An example of the practical application of traditional
busbar protection principles is given in Section 10.9.

Figure 10.18b. CT location arrangements and overlapping zones of

protection.

The check feature makes tripping dependent upon two

completely separate measurements of fault current using separate
CTs and different routing for CT wiring to the protection relays. In
a double busbar arrangement a separate protective relay is
applied to each bus section (zones 1 and 2) and an overall check
system arranged to cover all sections of both main and reserve
busbars.

In current practice, schemes based on multiple operating

principles and sometimes based on a distributed concept, are
applied for EHV substations. These schemes are typically low
impedance types and handle differing CT ratios, a high amount of
CT saturation, diverse issues such as evolving faults and CT
remanance. Continuous self-supervision and the ability to detect
abnormalities on CTs, CT wiring and the auxiliary contacts used to
provide a bus image make the scheme complete and highly
reliable, thus obviating needs for a separate set of check zone CTs
and relays.
 Read full chapter

URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780080969121000101

Related terms:
Circuit Breaker, Transformer Protection,

Bushings, Substations, Overvoltage,

Current Transformer, Earth Fault,

Earth Fault Protection, Protection Scheme,

All content on this site: Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V., its licensors, and contributors. All rights are
reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies. For all open
Switchgear.
access content, the Creative Commons licensing terms apply.

Recommended publications

International Journal of Electrical Power & Energy

Systems

Journal

Electric Power Systems Research

Journal

Practical Power System and Protective Relays

Commissioning

Book • 2019

Transmission and Distribution Electrical Engineering

(Fourth Edition)

Book • 2011