UNSW - SCHOOL OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS

ELEC4612 POWER SYSTEM ANALYSIS LABORATORY

EXPERIMENT 3

SHORT CIRCUIT FAULTS

1. AIM:
With the aid of the PowerWorld Simulator program, the objectives are:

To determine the short citcuit fault currents in a simple power system network.
To investigate the effect of fault type (line to ground, line to line, etc), fault location,
fault impedance.
To study the effect of transformer grounding type on fault currents.

2. BACKGROUND:
Most failures in power systems involves short circuit. Short circuits may occur when
equipment insulation fails because of the insulation material ageing, improper installation, or
accidents, e.g. tree branches fall on transmission lines during a storm. Such incidents result in
costly power outages, degrade the power service quality and have severe impacts on the
security of the power system. To explore various fault possibilities, a short circuit study is
required.
When a short-circuit fault occurs in the power system, the fault current and voltage can be
very substantial. Consequently, this may cause damage to equipment or even violent
explosion if the fault is not cleared soon enough. The current and voltage appeared during the
short circuit faults play an important role in power system operation and design:

The proper selection of power system components such as circuit breakers, cables,
instrument transformers, etc is based on the result of short circuit analysis. For
instance, the RMS value of short-circuit current is one of the criteria used to specify
the breaking capacity of the circuit breaker.
The short-circuit current and voltage are the input parameters of protection equipment
for fault detection and location.
During designing the main connection mode, it is necessary to perform short circuit
calculation in order to choose the optimal connection mode.

In a three-phase system, short circuit faults can occur in different ways: three-phase short
circuit, two-phase short circuit, two-phase to ground short circuit, one-phase to ground short
circuit. A three-phase short circuit fault is a symmetrical fault, whereas the other are
unsymmetrical faults. Three-phase faults are rare, but more severe than the other cases. Thus
in short circuit studies, three-phase short circuit faults are frequently considered.
Various short circuit tests can be carried out to provide necessary data for short circuit study.
However, such tests are usually very costly and furthermore they are destructive. The
alternative is to develop a model of the tested system to simulate the short circuits instead of
actual testing.

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The methods and mathematical details for short-circuit fault analysis can be readily found in
the prescribed textbook (Glover et al, Chapters 7-9). However, it is worth mentioning here
some important points:

During a fault, the current can be separated into two major components: a dc current
and an ac current. The dc component decays eventually to zero as the energy stored in
the system damps in form of I 2 R losses. In calculation of short circuit currents, it is
usually assumed that the fast transient components of the fault current have damped
out and disappeared. Therefore, this short circuit current is the steady-state 50Hz
sinusoidal component of the fault current.

The method of symmetrical components is normally used for asymmetrical fault

analysis. According to this method, a set of asymmetrical phase components can be
transformed to a new set of components, called symmetrical components. By applying
this method, the sequence networks of a balanced three-phase network can be
separated into three uncoupled networks. Furthermore, for an unbalanced three-phase
system, the three sequence networks are connected only at the unbalanced point. In
this case, the unbalanced three-phase systems are greatly simplified.

3. SIMULATIONS:
Procedure:
1.

Use PowerWorld to build a model of an eight-bus power system network as shown in

Figure 1. This power system consists of 3 synchronous generators. There are 4 loads and
7 transmission lines in the system. The corresponding data of the power system is given
in Tables 1 and 2. All the generators are identical with a rated voltage of 13.8kV and a
maximum MW output of 100MW. All three transformers are identical: 13.8/69kV,
150MVA, 0.158 pu impedance. For all transmission lines, the MVA limit is 150MVA.

Figure 1: Single-line diagram of a 8-bus power system.

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Table 1: Bus data

Bus
No.

Generated

Generated

Load

(MW)

(MVar)

(MW)

Load
(MVar)

Bus
Type
*

0.0

0.0

Voltage

Generated

Generated

Level

max.(MVar)

min(MVar)

(kV)

50.0

-25.0

13.8

34.0

0.0

0.0

50.0

-25.0

13.8

51.0

0.0

0.0

50.0

-25.0

13.8

0.0

0.0

0.0

0.0

0.0

0.0

69.0

0.0

0.0

8.0

2.0

0.0

0.0

69.0

0.0

0.0

61.0

7.0

0.0

0.0

69.0

0.0

0.0

78.0

0.0

0.0

0.0

69.0

0.0

0.0

22.0

19.0

0.0

0.0

69.0

*Bus Type: (1) swing bus, (2) generator bus, (3) load bus.
Table 2: Transmission line data.
From Bus

To Bus

Resistance (p.u.)

Reactance (p.u.)

Line Charging (p.u.)

0.05813

0.17329

0.0

0.06501

0.17003

0.0326

0.06401

0.17304

0.0392

0.02643

0.06435

0.0

0.01335

0.04201

0.0138

0.05295

0.17306

0.0401

0.05811

0.17632

0.0374

2.

Effect of fault type:

Switch to Run Mode, and open the Fault Analysis dialog under the Tools tab. Apply
each of the four fault types, the three-phase line to ground, the single line-to-ground, the
line-to-line and the double line-to-ground fault on the transmission line connected from
bus 4 to bus 5. The grounding impedance is zero. The location of the fault is 50% along
the line. Record the fault magnitudes.

3.

Effect of fault location:

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Apply a zero-impedance single phase fault on the transmission line connected from bus 4
to bus 5. Calculate the fault currents when the faults occur at 0%~100% along the line in
10% steps. Plot the variation of the fault current magnitude versus the distance of the
fault from the bus 4, and evaluate the results.
4.

Effect of fault impedance:

Apply a single phase to ground fault type, with zero-impedance, on the transmission line
connected from bus 4 to bus 5. The location of the fault is 50% along the line. Record the
fault current. Then increase the fault resistance from 0 to 2 p.u., and again record the fault
current. To increase the fault impedance, go to the Fault Options tab in the Fault
Analysis dialog. Plot the variation in the fault current magnitudes versus the fault
resistance and evaluate the results.

5.

Effect of transformers grounding type:

Apply a single line-to-ground fault with the fault impedance Z=0.25+j0 on the
transmission line connected between bus 4 and bus 5. The location of the fault is 50%
along the line. Change the grounding type of the transformer connected between bus 1
and bus 4 and calculate the fault current. To change the grounding type of the
transformer, go to the Fault Info tab in the Transmission Line/Transformer
Information dialog by right clicking on the transformer and selecting Line
Information., specify the type of Configuration as:
(a) YN YN (Grounded Wye Grounded Wye)
(b) Y
( Delta Wye)
(c) YN
(Delta Grounded Wye)

6.

Bus fault:
Repeat steps (2) and (4) but apply the faults at bus 5.

4. DISCUSSION:
1. Evaluate the results in (2) and determine which type of fault gives the highest current
magnitude at each phase. Explain why.
2. Discuss the impacts of the grounding type of the transformer on the fault current.
3. Discuss the available methods to limit the fault current.

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