WPRC 2007

Power System Frequency Measurement for Frequency Relaying

Spark Xue, Bogdan Kasztenny, Ilia Voloh and Dapo Oyenuga GE Multilin

Organization of the presentation

Frequency definition and signal models Requirement on frequency measurement Review of frequency measurement methods Simulation tests on four typical algorithms Frequency relay design and test

The general definition of frequency

General definition: The number of cycles or alterations per unit time of a wave or oscillation.

Fourier Transform

Rotating phasor

Frequency for arbitrary signal including aperiodic signal

Instantaneous Frequency

Power system frequency

Generator frequency
VA A
B C

VB VC A

The frequency of ith node in the system Use rotating phasor The frequency is: for ith node voltage

Power system frequency

System frequency:

Node frequency:

Apparent frequency: what a relay sees

Signal models - 1
Basic signal model

or

Signal with harmonics/noise and dc components

Signal models - 2
Three-phase model based on Clarke transform

Three-phase model based on positive seq. component

The frequency relaying

Under/over frequency relays (generator protection, load shedding scheme, etc.) Over-excitation protection Synchrocheck relays Phasor measurement units Phasor-based numerical relays

Requirements for frequency measurement

The measured frequency or frequency rate-of-change should be the true reflections of the power system state The accuracy should be good enough under system steady state and dynamic conditions The frequency estimation should be fast enough to follow the actual frequency change to satisfy the need of the intended application The frequency tracking for generator protection should have wide range to handle generator starting-up and shutting-down The frequency measurement should be stable and robust when the signal is distorted

Frequency measurement algorithms

Zero-crossing Digital Fourier transform (DFT) with compensation Signal decomposition Signal demodulation Phase locked loop Nonlinear iterative methods (LES, LMS, Newton, Kalman filter, etc.) Artificial intelligence (NN, Fuzzy, GA) Wavelet transform And more

Review 1: Zero-crossing methods

Simple, not affected by signal amplitude variation, relatively less susceptible to harmonics and noise Highly susceptible to dc component and phase abnormity Accurate localization zero-crossings is critical Polynomial interpolating / linear interpolating Has delay for frequency estimation

Review 2 - 1: DFT with compensation

Frequency is derived as phasor rotating speed

Review 2 - 2: DFT with compensation

Leakage error occurs if the sampling frequency is not an integer multiple the signal frequency
Frequency domain for a 60Hz signal (fs = 3840Hz) Frequency domain for a 59Hz signal (fs = 3840Hz)

Magnitudes of the phasors for 60Hz / 59Hz signals (fs = 3840Hz)

Angles of the phasors for 60Hz / 59Hz signals (fs = 3840Hz)

Review 2 - 3: DFT with compensation

To compensate leakage error, there are four main approaches: The window length is fixed, the sampling frequency is updated The sampling frequency is fixed, the window length is updated Both the sampling frequency and the window length are fixed, the data are re-sampled Both the sampling frequency and the window length are fixed, the leakage error is compensated analytically

The DFT method is susceptible to harmonics and noise

Review 3: Signal decomposition

Original signal
Input signal v(t) Cosine Filter

Orthogonal signals
Sine Filter

Frequency E.g.

v1 v2 f

The different filter gains at off-nominal frequencies would bring error

Good results can be achieved after error compensation

Review 4: Signal demodulation and PLL

Signal demodulation

It can achieve high accuracy, insusceptible to harmonics / noise The low-pass filter design is critical

The Phase locked loop (PLL)

Highly accurate and insusceptible to harmonics and noise The dynamic response may be slow

Review 5-1: Non-linear iterative methods

Non-linear iterative methods: Least error squares (LES) methods Least mean squares (LMS) methods Newton type methods Kalman filters And more A common feature: iteratively minimize the error between model estimations and the observations (sample values). They could be highly accurate and relatively robust, but the convergence could be slow and computational cost could be high

Review 5-2: A example - Newton method

Signal model: The parameters to be estimated: Objective function: Parameters updating: Updating step:

Performance evaluation
Three aspects: the accuracy, the estimation latency and the robustness The accuracy 1mHz resolution 1mHz accuracy

The maximum error and the average error Use benchmark signals to check the accuracy, the latency and the robustness, e.g., The signal frequency is modulated by a 1.0Hz swing The signal amplitude is modulated by a 1.5Hz swing The signal is contaminated by 3rd, 5th, 7th harmonics and noise The signal contains dc component The signal contains 25Hz low frequency component

Simulation tests
Four typical algorithms are selected Zero-crossing with linear interpolation (ZC) DFT with compensation (SDFT, proposed by Yang & Liu) Signal decomposing (SDC, proposed by Szafran) Signal demodulation (SDM, using a 6-order IIR filter with more than 100dB stop-band attenuation) Platform: MATLAB Sampling Frequency: 3840Hz Additional filters are NOT used

Test 1: Stationary signal with off-nominal frequencies

Use basic signal model

f = 61.5Hz, 59.3Hz, 58.1Hz, 45.2Hz, 20.3Hz

Test 2: Track the frequency change

Test 3: Both frequency and amplitude are time-varying

Test 4: The frequency step change test

Frequency change from 60Hz to 59.5Hz within one sampling interval

Test 5: Signal containing harmonics

Test 6: Signal containing low-frequency components

Test 7: Signal containing dc component

Test 8: Signal containing impulsive noise

Test 9: Power system simulation test the model

Meter Hydraulic Turbine

G
Excitation System Synchronuous Machine 200MVA/13.8kV Transformer 210MVA 13.8kV/230kV Voltage Source 1500MVA, 230kV

Test 9: Power system simulation test

Rotor speed

ZC

SDFT

SDC

SDM

Digital frequency relay / element design

Pre-filtering: to clean up and to fix distortions Band-pass filter (e.g. 20-65Hz passband) The stop band attenuation should be reasonably high (e.g. 20-40dB) Additional impulsive noise detector Post filtering: low-pass filter or moving average filter to improve accuracy Security conditions: to remove abnormal frequency The rate-of-change (df/dt) needs additional filtering and security check

Test an actual relay : case 1

The analytical test signal Contains dc component, harmonics, white noise, impulsive noise, Both frequency and amplitude are oscillating Produced by MATLAB, saved in comtrade file, played back by RTDS

The tracking frequency

Test an actual relay : case 2

The voltage signal from model simulation

The tracking frequency

Tests recommendations
The steady-state signal test with off-nominal frequencies Check the basic accuracy, verify the resolution, the measurement range The frequency ramping-down test Ramping step up to 0.1Hz and ramping rate up to 5Hz/s Check the dynamic accuracy Check the operating time The robustness test Add 3rd, 5th, 7th harmonics (5% each) and noise (SNR=40-60dB) The playback test

Summary
Power system frequency is not an instantaneous value, even though the concept of instantaneous frequency could be utilized for frequency estimation. For various numerical algorithms based on signal periodicity or instantaneous frequency, the common goal is to pursue high accuracy and fast estimation, under the condition of robustness. In fact, it is necessary to use a few cycles of data to derive the frequency, in order to obtain stable measurement under various signal conditions. For frequency relay design, the balance between the accuracy and the group delay need to be achieved, filters and security check conditions are needed. The frequency relay needs to be tested under adverse signal conditions.

Thank you, questions?