A Novel Phase Selection Method Based on Instantaneous Reactive
Power
Shuxin Luo, Xinzhou Dong, Shenxing Shi, Bin Wang
Department of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Keywords: Hilbert transform; Instantaneous reactive power;
Phase selection; UHV transmission lines;
Abstract
Travelling wave protection, which performs brilliantly with
high operation speed, is perfectly feasible for ultra-high
voltage (UHV) transmission line protection. Since nearly 70%
faults in UHV transmission lines are single-line to ground
(SLG) faults, the cooperation of single phase tripping and
auto-reclosing is the most common and effective method to
isolate SLG faults and improve the stability of the power
system. Among the techniques of single phase tripping, phase
selection is an essential part for its contribution to select the
exact faulted phase. However, traditional phase selection
algorithms do not work well with traveling wave protection
due to their low recognition speed. In this regard, an
innovative phase selection method is presented in this paper.
Firstly, reactive energies are proved to have significant
differences for healthy and faulted phase respectively. On this
basics, instantaneous reactive power is adopted to construct
selection criterion to accelerate identification speed. Various
simulation results have been conducted to validate that the
proposed method is advantageous for travelling wave
protection with rapid and accurate identification.
1 Introduction
With the rapid development of power systems, ultra-high
speed protection has been applied to isolate transmission line
faults as quickly as possible in order to ensure the security
and stability of the system. Travelling wave protection, one of
the most typical ultra-high speed protections, is widely
utilised in high voltage transmission lines [1-4]. Compared to
traditional protection, travelling wave protection is attractive
not only for its high speed reaction, but also for its robustness
to CT saturation and distributed capacitor current.
As SLG faults are the most common faults in UHV
transmission lines, single phase tripping is applied to isolate
SLG faults. Phase selection techniques are indispensable
procedures for identifying the faulted phase. For travelling
wave protection, it requires quick and accurate phase
selection methods to cope with high action speed. However,
traditional phase selection methods, making use of power
frequency component, is not feasible in travelling wave
protection due to its slow speed in faulted phase identification
[5, 6]. In this regard, several extended methods have been
investigated in the past decades. Reference [7] used initial
1
travelling wave to select the faulted phase, which is
advantageous in identification speed, but is also defective in
its vulnerability to the wave reflection and refraction.
Moreover, in the cases of small fault initial angles, the
magnitude of travelling wave current is so faint that the
method cannot identify the fault type correctly. On the other
hand, transient energy is applied in phase selection to improve
recognition performance. However, in some cases of three-
phase faults, this method may mistakenly classify them into
two-phase faults. In addition, Reference [9] uses neutral
network to analyse fault high frequency noises and identify
the faulted phase. This algorithm needs complicated
calculation and is not practical in relay device.
In this paper, aiming at improving the accuracy and rapidity
of phase selection, a novel method based on instantaneous
reactive power is presented. The basic principles of
instantaneous reactive power are firstly introduced in Section
2. In Section 3, a phase selection method is proposed to
identify the fault type and the faulted phase, and the detailed
algorithm is presented as well. Extensive simulations are
carried out in Section 4 to verify the effectiveness of the
proposed method. Finally, conclusions are summarized in
Section 5.
2 Basic principle
2.1 Fault characteristic
According to the superposition theorem, a faulted system can
be decomposed into normal operation network and fault
component network. The fault components of voltage and
current are calculated in (1).
'u (t ) u (t )  u (t  T )
(1)
'i(t ) i(t )  i(t  T )
where T represents the power frequency period of voltage and
current.
Figure 1 shows the fault component network in SLG fault
situation. Assume that the negative sequence impedance of
the transmission line is the same as the positive sequence
impedance. From Figure 1, the results of Ia, Ib and Ic are
formulated in (2).
 2.3 Definition of instantaneous reactive power
Zm M N Zn
C Ic The concept of instantaneous reactive power for sinusoidal
B Ib signals was first developed in [10]. It is used for reactive
Ia power calculation in reactive power compensation. Another
A F
definition of instantaneous reactive power is proposed in [11]
to be applied in non-sinusoidal signals, as shown in (9). The
UF voltage and current after faults contain steady sinusoidal
components and transient non-sinusoidal components as well.
Therefore, the instantaneous reactive power defined in (9) is
adopted in this study to deal with the transient non-sinusoidal
Figure 1: Fault component network in SLG fault situation
signals. It can be proved that the integration of instantaneous
reactive power in one cycle equals to the definition of
'I a I a 0  2 I a1 traditional reactive power [11, 12].
(2)
'I b 'I c I a 0  I a1 q(t ) u(t )iq (t ) u(t )Gqu(t ) (9)
Ia0 and Ia1 are expressed in (3). In (9), u(t ) is the Hilbert transform result of u(t). Gq is a
( L  x) Z 0  Z n U F ( L  x) Z1  Z n U F factor defined in (10), and iq(t) is the reactive component of
Ia0 , I a1 (3)
LZ 0  Z m  Z n Z LZ1  Z m  Z n Z current.
where Z is defined in (4).  u (t ), i (t ) !  u (t ), i (t ) !
Gq 2 2
(10)
( xZ1  Z m )[( L  x) Z1  Z n ] ( xZ 0  Z m )[( L  x) Z 0  Z n ] u(t ) u (t )
Z 2 
LZ1  Z m  Z n LZ 0  Z m  Z n For fault component network, the reactive energy is the
(4) integration of the fault component of the instantaneous
reactive power q(t), as shown in (11). Voltage and current
In the aforementioned formulas, Z1, Z0 depict the positive and
fault components u(t), i(t) are used to calculate q(t)
zero sequence impedance of the transmission line per unit of
according to (9). This result includes the reactive energy of
length. x is the fault distance and L is the total length of the
power frequency component, as well as the transient reactive
transmission line.
energy of high frequency component.
t
With the fact that Ia0 is approximately equal to Ia1, it can be 'Q(t ) 'q(W )dW (11)
concluded that Ia is much larger than Ib and Ic, as shown 0

in (5). Therefore, the reactive energy shown in (6) has the

same characteristic as the fault current. Similarly, the current 3 Proposed method
and reactive energy of the healthy phase in two-phase faults
are much smaller than the faulted phases. In three-phase faults,
as the system remains symmetrical, the currents and reactive 3.1 Algorithm
energies of three phases remain almost equal to each other.
The reactive energies of three phases Qa(t), Qb(t) and Qc(t)
'I a 'Ib 'I c (5) are calculated and sorted as Q (t), Q (t) and Q (t).
max mid min
These three indices have different performances in different
'Qa 'I a imag(Zm ) 'Qb 'Qc
2
(6) kinds of faults:

2.2 Hilbert transform 1) Single-line to ground fault - The faulted phase has the
maximum reactive energy and it is much greater than the
Hilbert transform, as defined in (7), is an all-pass filter which normal ones;
performs a -90 degree shift for the positive frequency 2) Two-phase fault - The reactive energies of the two faulted
component of the signal. phases are much greater than the healthy phase;
1 f x(W ) 1 3) Three-phase fault - The energies of three phases are
S
x(t ) dW x(t )* (7) almost the same as the system remains symmetrical.
f t W St
Therefore, the phase selection can be accomplished by the
In relay implement, Hilbert transform was discretized as filter following principle where kset1 and kset2 are the setting values.
h[n], as shown in (8). 'Qmax (t )
1) Single-line to ground fault: ! kset1 ;
0, for n even 'Qmid (t )

h[n] 2 (8) 'Qmid (t )
nS , for n odd 2) Two-phase fault: ! kset 2 ;
'Qmin (t )
3) Three-phase fault: all other results.

2
In order to improve the reliability of the algorithm, only when distributed capacitors in order to restrict over-voltage in the
the condition shown in (12) is satisfied, the method begins to transmission lines. In this model, the compensation factor is
carry out the fault type and fault phase. 35% in either side.
'Qmax (t ) ! Qset and t > 5ms (12) M N
L1 500km
Qset is set as the reactive energy produced by 10% variation of
voltage and current in half a period as shown in (13). S1 S
F1
Qset t 0.1U *0.1I *T / 2 0.065 MVar s (13) L2
S2
Load S3
In this study, Qset is set as 0.07 MVars and kset1, kset2 are set to
be 10. In order to improve the reliability of the method, only
if three consecutive calculated results satisfy the same Figure 3: Simulation model
principle, the fault type is decided and the faulted phase is
identified. 4.2 Different Fault types
Reactive energies during A-G fault, AC phase to ground fault
3.2 Flowchart
and ABC three phase fault are shown in Figure 4. More
The flowchart of the proposed phase selection method is results of different types of faults are shown in Table 1. The
shown in Figure 2. proposed method can identify the correct fault type and the
faulted phase in 5.2 ms. The response time is calculated from
Voltage and current the time when fault happened.
sampling data
0.5
Reactive energy

Fault 0
(MVARs)

happened?
-0.5
' Qa(t)
Yes -1 ' Qb(t)
' Qc(t)
t > 5ms -1.5
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Time (ms)
Yes
(a) Phase A to ground fault
Calculate Qa(t), 1
Qb(t) and Qc(t)
Reactive energy

0
No
(MVARs)

-1
Yes Qmax (t)>Qset ' Qa(t)
-2 ' Qb(t)
' Qc(t)
-3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Qmax (t)/Qmid(t) No Qmid(t)/Qmin(t) No Time (ms)
>kset1 >kset2
(b) AC phase to ground fault
No Yes No Yes No 1
Reactive energy

0
(MVARs)

Consecutive three Consecutive three Consecutive three

points? points? points? -1
' Qa(t)
Yes Yes Yes -2 ' Qb(t)
' Qc(t)
-3
Single phase fault Two phase fault Three phase fault 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Time (ms)
(c) ABC three-phase fault
End
Figure 4: Phase reactive energies during different kinds of
Figure 2: Flowchart of the proposed phase selection method faults ( *Note that Qb(t) and Qc(t) are almost the same in
(a). )
4 Simulations
Fault Qa(t) Qb(t) Qc(t) Response
types (MVars) (MVars) (MVars) time (ms)
4.1 Simulation model A-G -0.5025 -0.0062 -0.0062 5.2
B-G -1.61e-4 -0.1040 -1.54e-4 5.2
A simulation model recommended by the Chinese national C-G -0.0055 -0.0055 -0.1764 5.2
standard is built using EMTP/ATP, as shown in Figure 3 [13]. AB -0.3479 -0.3481 -1.47e-8 5.2
The frequency-dependent transmission line model is BC -3.02e-8 -0.1199 -0.1201 5.2
employed [14]. Shunt reactors are used to compensate the AC -0.4445 -8.53e-9 -0.4444 5.2

3
 ABG -0.6829 -0.1825 -0.0033 5.2 the situation of close-up faults and long distance faults. In
BCG -0.0038 -0.1488 -0.1898 5.2 close-up fault situations, the method shows up a greater
ACG -0.6705 -9.71e-5 -0.3230 5.2 sensitivity due to the reactive power of the faulted phase is
ABC -0.8395 -0.1848 -0.2939 5.2 much larger than far-away faults.

Table 1: Results of different types of faults (Fault distance: Fault

Qa(t) Qb(t) Qc(t) Response
100 km) distance
(MVars) (MVars) (MVars) time (ms)
(km)
4.3 Influence of fault resistance 1 -3.3963 -0.0403 -0.0403 5.2
10 -2.4513 -0.0258 -0.0258 5.2
The influences of fault resistances are studied in this paper. 100 -0.5025 -0.0062 -0.0062 5.2
The simulation results are shown in Table 2 indicating that 200 -0.2411 -0.0081 -0.0082 5.2
the phase selection method is adaptive in high resistance fault 250 -0.2557 -0.0070 -0.0070 5.2
situation. With the increase of the resistance, the response 300 -0.2560 -0.0084 -0.0084 5.2
time becomes longer. When the fault resistance increases up 400 -0.2261 -0.0061 -0.0061 5.2
to 400 , the response time will be 6.9 ms. 499 -0.5708 -0.0555 -0.0555 5.2

Fault Table 4: Results of AG faults with different fault distances

Qa(t) Qb(t) Qc(t) Response
resistance
(MVars) (MVars) (MVars) time (ms)
()
5 Conclusions
0.1 -0.5025 -0.0062 -0.0062 5.2
1 -0.5018 -0.0062 -0.0062 5.2 This paper focuses on phase selection techniques for
10 -0.4849 -0.0056 -0.0056 5.2 travelling wave protection. The study first analyses the fault
20 -0.4539 -0.0050 -0.0050 5.2 component current in fault conditions, showing that the
50 -0.3497 -0.0038 -0.0038 5.2 reactive energies of healthy phases are much smaller than the
100 -0.2265 -0.0026 -0.0026 5.2 faulted phases, which is suitable to be a phase selection
200 -0.1136 -0.0014 -0.0014 5.2 criterion. On this basis, instantaneous reactive power based on
300 -0.0757 -9.40e-4 -9.39e-4 5.5 Hilbert transform, is adopted to construct a novel phase
400 -0.0772 -7.25e-4 -7.25e-4 6.9 selection method to identify the fault type and faulted phase.
The innovative method is accurate for significant differences
Table 2: Results of AG faults with different fault resistances of reactive energies in healthy and faulted phase, and it is also
(Fault distance: 100 km, fault type: AG) rapid in selection by using the instantaneous index instead of
frequency component as normal methods.
4.4 Influence of fault initial angle
Furthermore, various kinds of faults with different grounding
The influences of different fault initial angles are also resistances, fault initial angles and fault distances are
simulated. For the methods based on travelling wave, it is simulated to test the feasibility of the proposed algorithm.
non-effective in the case of fault occurred with zero voltage Simulation results show that the presented method is well
angle. Simulation results in Table 3 show that the proposed adaptive in diverse situations with brilliant speed. Compared
phase selection method can perform quickly and accurately in to the phase selection methods using travelling wave, this
the cases of small fault initial angles. method is irrespective of small fault initial angle. Meanwhile,
in the cases of close-up faults and high impedance faults, its
Fault performance is also satisfactory. As a result, it can be
Qa(t) Qb(t) Qc(t) Response
angle concluded that the reactive energy based method, which has
(MVars) (MVars) (MVars) time (ms)
(degree) great advantages in rapidly identifying the faulted phase by
0 -0.0987 -1.72e-4 -1.69e-4 5.2 using the instantaneous data, is feasible to be applied in
5 -0.1093 -1.65e-4 -1.63e-4 5.2 traveling wave protection.
10 -0.1240 -2.58e-4 -2.57e-4 5.2
20 -0.1629 -7.47e-4 -7.47e-4 5.2
30 -0.2459 -0.0019 -0.0019 5.2
Appendix
60 -0.4979 -0.0058 -0.0058 5.2 The line configuration is shown below:
90 -0.3861 -0.0078 -0.0079 5.2

Table 3: Results of AG faults with different fault initial angles

4.5 Influence of fault distance

Table 4 shows the results of AG faults with different fault
distances. It can be concluded that the method adapts well in

4

Figure A1: Tower structure of 750 kV parallel transmission
lines
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (Grant 50937003, 51120175001,
51107062).
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