OPTIMIZING AUTOMATED RELAY SETTINGS: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS USING SIMULATION-BASED PROTECTION SCHEMES

Protection of the electrical power system is vital to ensure reliability of operations by automatically detecting faults and acting quickly. The reliability of modern power networks with increasingly complex composition, coupled with escalating energy requirements, has made it a challenge for protection engineers to determine the relay configurations as well as ensure effective coordination among the relays. This paper proposes an overcurrent (OC) protection coordination strategy that considers both directional and non-directional relays, evaluated through simulation-based methods. The suitability of the suggested scheme is analyzed by applying it to a 132/33 kV substation as a case study, subject to further extension to a 33 kV multi-sources network. The ETAP (Electrical Transient Analysis Program) package has been utilized in simulating as well as investigating actual relay as well as breaker tripping times. Short-circuit as well as load flow analysis were conducted to determine pickup as well as plug setting multipliers (PSMs). The result verifies that the use of simulation tools can vastly minimize the process of relay configuration, ensuring a reliable as well as efficient solution for complex power networks.