Why We Need Protection System? (Cont…)

•Electrical power system operates at various voltage levels from 415 V to 400 KV or even more. Electrical apparatus used may be enclosed (e.g., motors) or placed in open (e.g., transmission lines). All such equipment undergo abnormalities in their life time due to various reasons. For example, a worn out bearing may cause overloading of a motor. A tree falling or touching an overhead line may cause a fault. A lightning strike (classified as an act of God!) can cause insulation failure. Pollution may result in degradation in performance of insulators which may lead to breakdown. Under frequency or over frequency of a generator may result in mechanical damage to it's turbine requiring tripping of an alternator. Even otherwise, low frequency operation will reduce the life of a turbine and hence it should be avoided.

It is necessary to avoid these abnormal operating regions for safety of the equipment.

•Even more important is safety of the human personnel which may be endangered due to exposure to live parts under fault or abnormal operating conditions. Small current of the order of 50 MA is sufficient to be fatal!

•Whenever human security is sacrificed or there exists possibility of equipment damage, it is necessary to isolate and de-energize the equipment.

• Designing electrical equipment from safety perspective is also a crucial design issue which will not be addressed here. To conclude, every electrical equipment has to be monitored to protect it and provide human safety under abnormal operating conditions. This job is assigned to electrical protection systems. It encompasses apparatus protection and system protection.

•We need to balance reliability and cost in designing a power system.

•While it is impossible to avoid the occurrence of faults and other abnormal operation conditions that produce large power system disturbances, a protection system is intended to take preventive or corrective actions in such cases.