A novel fast distance relay for long transmission lines

The measuring accuracy and the measurement stability of conventional distance relay will be influenced by complex and remarkable harmonic components due to the large capacitance of the line when it is used for a long line. Correspondingly, the tripping speed will be delayed to some extent. To solve this problem, a fast distance relay for long transmission lines is presented, which is on the basis of the differential equation algorithm using π transmission line model and the theory of Equal Transfer Process of Transmission Lines (ETPTL). The shortcomings of π model differential equation algorithm due to the impact of high frequency components can be overcome by using a low-pass filter. The problem resulting from the difference between the transfer feature of the voltages used by the distance protection and that of the currents due to the transient characteristic of coupling capacitor voltage transformers (CCVT) can be solved by using virtual digital CCVT. Then, the new distance relay can trip quickly by re-structuring the voltage at the fault point and iterative calculations. A variety of ATP simulation tests show that the new relay has fast tripping speed and high reliability when applied to the long transmission lines.