A KNOWLEDGE-BASED SYSTEM FOR ON-LINE

DIAGNOSIS OF POWER SYSTEM FAULT ALLOCATION

Emesto Vhquez M., Oscar L. Chac6n M., Hector J. Altuve F.

Due to the relay fail to trip that may occur in power system, backup protection will operate or a cascaded trip may happen leading
to a wide area of outage, this paper is trying to use a decision tree
of the relay and the circuit breaker.

A. Relay operation classification:

1. A tripped relay is classified as primary protection of the faulted
element under study if such a relay belongs to any one of the
faulted element primary protection schemes.
2. A tripped relay is associated to backup protection if the faulted
element is inside the relay protection zone and it does not belong
to a primary protection scheme.
3. A tripped relay is considered as a backup of backup protection
if the faulted element is outside the relay protection zone, but

adjacent to any one of the elements located inside the relay

protection zone. This definition states that the faulted element
must have electrical connection through a breakerwith any one of
the elements protected by the relay. This type of relay operation
is restricted to those relays located in substations which are not
adjacent to the faulted element, except in a simple breaker array
with a parallel circuit to the faulted element.
4. A relay operation is classified as an incorrect one if it doesnt
fulfill any one of the three previous criteria.
5. Failure to operate is a classification used when the relay under
analysis belongs to the faulted element primary protection
scheme, but it is not among the relays reported as tripped.
B. Circuit breaker operation classification:
6. If both the protection scheme and the remote breakers are
reported as tripped, the operation may be classified as a correct
one.
7. If the protection scheme is not reported as operated
(independent of the status of all the breakers), it is classified as a
failure to operate, due to malfunction of the communication
channel.
8. If tripping is not reported, the breaker operation is classified as
breaker failure to operate.

When a relay operation is classified as a primary protection failure

to operate, all the breakers associated to this relay are classified
as correctly operated, with independence from its status (tripped
or not tripped). If one breaker is reported as tripped, it is also
classified as correct operation, because it can have tripped as a
result of either another associated relay reported as tripped, or a
relay assumed as tripped by the error detection module.