Present Status and Future Trends in Travelling-Wave Based Protection of Power Transmission Lines

AGUILAR, R; MORALES, J; ORDUÑA, E.; PÉREZ, F

Congreso; 9th LATIN-AMERICAN CONGRESS ON ELECTRICITY GENERATION AND TRANSMISSION - CLAGTEE 2011; 2011

In addition to continuously growing electricity demand, the incorporation of interconnections, new technologies and new control systems has lead power systems to grow not only in size but also in complexity. Under such conditions, a series of difficult problems have arisen, essentially in terms of accuracy and speed, for existent phasor-estimation protection algorithms. Thus, the so-called travelling-wave based algorithms have been during a long time matter of intense research as an alternative for transmission line protective relaying. Particularly for application where high speed protection must be attained in order to guarantee transient stability, so is the case of ultra-high voltage (UHV) transmission lines which comprise bulk power interchange. The present work brings out an exhaustive discussion of the most relevant approaches and suggests a likely future outlook for travelling-wave based algorithms in the context of power transmission line protection.