Protective relay apparatus and method for providing single-pole tripping

Abstract

A new protective relay for determining the occurrence of a single-phase-to-ground fault and tripping the appropriate circuit breaker. At local and remote terminals of a protected line segment, three signals representative of an electrical parameter on each phase conductor are input to a local and remote protective relay. In both the local and remote protective relays, the three electrical parameter signals are manipulated to produce two evaluation signals. The two local evaluation signals produced in the local protective relay are transmitted to the remote protective relay, and the two remote evaluation signals produced in the remote protective relay are transmitted to the local protective relay. In the local protective relay the two local evaluation signals are manipulated to produce a third local evaluation signal, and the two remote evaluation signals are manipulated to produce a third remote evaluation signal. The six evaluation signals are vectorially-compared to determine on which phase the fault has occurred. Only the circuit interrupter associated with the faulted phase conductor is tripped. If a fault involves two or more phase conductors, all three circuit interrupters are tripped. Similar signal processing occurs in the remote protective relay.