New principle of busbar protection based on a fundamental frequency polarity comparison

To overcome the contradiction between speed and reliability in existing busbar protection schemes, a new busbar protection algorithm based on a polarity comparison of fundamental frequency currents is proposed. The algorithm extracts the fundamental frequency components of the fault reference current and the virtual current through a wavelet transform. The angle between the two currents is used to characterize the polarity relationship. The polarities of the virtual current and the reference current are the same when an internal fault occurs, and the angle will be small. The polarities of the two currents are opposite for an external fault, in which case the angle is larger. By analysing the variation characteristics of the angle between faults inside and outside busbar, a protection criterion is established, and the fault area is determined. In simulation results based on PSCAD/EMTDC, the algorithm can quickly and reliably identify the faults inside and outside the busbar area, and its performance is not affected by the initial fault angle, fault resistance, fault type or capacitor voltage transformer (CVT) transmission characteristics.