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Differential circulating current protection scheme or Mertz Price circulating current scheme is a most popular protection scheme for
alternator stator protection. It function on the concept of compareing the two currents in and out of stator coil. In normal condition
the two current will be same, if fault occurs there will be some difference , and Merz price circulating current scheme works by detecting
this difference or differential current.
Under normal condition there will be no current difference in two sides of protected zone, hence Two ct’s in a phase will conduct same
current. Thus currents from two ct’s will be balanced as current entering in same point of same value from opposite direction is
vectorically summed up as zero.(From Kirchhoff current law concept)
impedance faults are generally not detected by conventional protection functions like over
current, ground fault, distance, differential etc. because of the magnitude of impedance
involved in the fault path and the nature and characteristic of the fault current are special
and different than the conventional fault current profiles. Each type of high impedance fault
is unique in terms of magnitude of fault current, nature, characteristic and waveshape.
Majority of the high impedance faults are single phase to ground faults but this can involve
phase to phase elements as well. Because of the inability of the conventional protection
functions to detect high impedance faults especially high impedance phase to ground faults,
the electrical conductor remains live under such condition and as can be imagined, poses a
huge and significant risk to wild life and more importantly human life.