Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, Inc.

Matchyaraju Alla

Normann Fischer

Dale S Finney

Ritwik Chowdhury

Armando Guzman-Casillas

Kanchanrao Gangadhar Dase

Satish Samineni

Vinod K Yedidi

Rogerio Scharlach

Jakov Vico

Wasif Ahmad

Shreenivas Pai

James Burton Colwell

Dale Finney

The present disclosure pertains to devices, systems, and methods for monitoring a generator. In one embodiment, the system may include a measurement subsystem to receive a plurality of split-phase measurements of branch currents associated with the at least one generator. A split-phase transverse differential monitoring subsystem may receive the plurality of split-phase measurements of branch currents associated with the at least one generator and may generate an offset value representing a standing split-phase current. A protective action subsystem may generate a first protective action based on the phasor operating current.

Split-phase protection of generators

Disclosed herein are systems for determining a broken conductor condition in a multiple-phase electric power delivery system. It has been observed that broken conductors pose a safety concern when occurring in the presence of people or vulnerable environmental conditions. Broken conductor conditions disclosed herein may be used to detect and trip the phase with the broken conductor, thus reducing or even eliminating the safety risk. Broken conductors may be determined using detected phase series arcing differences in one phase without commensurate differences in other phases. In various embodiments the phase series arcing attributes may be phase current monitored for decrement and/or phase resistance monitored for increase.

Identifying conductor breaks by detecting series arcing

The present disclosure relates to systems and methods for protecting against and mitigating the effects of over-excitation of elements in electric power systems. In one embodiment, a system consistent with the present disclosure may comprise a point pair subsystem to receive a plurality of point pairs that define an over-excitation curve for a piece of monitored equipment. The system may receive a plurality of measurements corresponding to electrical conditions associated with the piece of monitored equipment. A logarithmic interpolation subsystem may determine a logarithmic interpolation corresponding to one of the plurality of measurements based on the plurality of point pairs. An over-excitation detection subsystem may detect an over-excitation condition based on the logarithmic interpolation, and a protective action subsystem may implement a protective action based on the over-excitation condition.

Accurate modeling of equipment overexcitation damage curves

Detection of, and protection against faults within a restricted earth fault (REF) zone of a transformer or a generator is disclosed herein. Security of the REF protection element uses comparison of a negative-sequence reference quantity. The REF condition is only detected when there is sufficient ground involvement and a fault in the reverse detection has not been detected. Dependability of the REF protection element in low-impedance grounded systems is improved by ensuring that the element operates when a zero-sequence reference quantity and a neutral operate quantity are orthogonal to each other. The REF protection element further determines an open CT condition and blocks detection of an REF fault upon determination of the open CT condition. A tripping subsystem may issue a trip command based upon detection of the REF condition.

Secure and dependable restricted earth fault protection for electric power generators and transformers

A generator system includes a generator including terminals, a generator circuit breaker coupled to the terminals and that couples and decouples the generator from a power grid, multiple sensors, and a controller that operates the generator system. The controller determines whether an active power is less than a reverse active power threshold and whether one or more turbine valves are closed, and determines that a breaker failure has occurred based on the active power being less than the reverse active power threshold and the one or more turbine valves being closed. If the active power remains less than the reverse active power and the turbine valves remain closed after a threshold time period after the trip command, and if a reactive power is less than a reverse reactive power threshold, then a breaker failure has occurred. In response, the controller may transmit another trip command to the generator circuit breaker to initiate the breaker failure protection.

Breaker failure protection using reverse active power and negative reactive power element

Detection and protection against electric power generator rotor turn-to-turn faults, rotor multi-point-to-ground faults, and rotor permanent magnet faults is provided herein. A fractional harmonic signal is used to determine the rotor fault condition. The fractional harmonic signal may be a fractional harmonic magnitude of the circulating current of one phase. The fractional harmonic may be a fractional harmonic magnitude of a neutral voltage. A tripping subsystem may issue a trip command based upon detection of a rotor turn-to-turn fault condition.

Generator rotor turn-to-turn fault detection using fractional harmonics

Protection devices prevent damage to synchronous generators during loss-of-field events. In various embodiments, a first protective element is associated with a first protection zone to protect a generator from a loss-of-field event at full load. A second protective element is associated with a second protection zone to prevent thermal overload during underexcited operation of the generator and to protect from loss-of-filed at light load. A third protective element associated with a third protection zone limits operation of the generator within the generator's specific steady-state stability limits. A fourth protective element is associated with a fourth protection zone to provide an alarm prior to operation of the second protective element. In various embodiments, characteristics and limits of each of the protective elements are defined in the same plane (specifically, the P-Q plane) to simplify settings and allow for visualization of the element characteristics and the generator capability curve at one or more temperatures or cooling capacities.

Generator loss-of-field protection

A transformer system including a transformer including a set of wye windings, a three-phase current transformer, a neutral-current transformer, and a controller. The three-phase current transformer outputs a first signal indicative of a three-phase current conducting through the set of wye windings and the three-phase current transformer. The neutral-current transformer couples the current flowing from the ground to the neutral node of the transformer, and outputs a second signal indicative of a neutral current conducting from the ground node to the neutral node of the transformer. The controller receives the first signal and the second signal, determines whether an external ground fault condition or an internal ground fault condition is present based on the three-phase current and the neutral current, and determines whether a wiring error is present for the three-phase current transformer or the neutral-current transformer based on the three-phase current and the neutral current.

Growing community of inventors

Pullman, WA, United States of America

Matchyaraju Alla