SYMMETRICAL COMPONENTS TUTORIALS FOR PROTECTIVE RELAYING



Symmetrical components are applied to calculations of unbalanced fault currents and voltages and in rotating machine analysis. Theory of symmetrical components can be briefly stated thus: a coplanar vector is defined by the position of its terminal and length and has 2 degrees of freedom.

A three-phase balanced system has 2 degrees of freedom because the current or voltage vectors (phasors) are displaced from each other by equal angles of separation of 120◦ and are of equal length. A three-phase unbalanced system of currents or voltages has 6 degrees of freedom because the vectors are of varying length at varying displacement angles from each other.

Such an unbalanced system can be resolved into three symmetrical systems, each system having three vectors with 2 degrees of freedom. Positive-sequence system is a set of balanced three-phase components of the same phase sequence as the original unbalanced set.

Negative-sequence system is a set of three-phase components of opposite phase sequence to the positive sequence system but vectors (phasors) of the same magnitude. Zero-sequence system consists of three single-phase components of the same magnitude and cophasial.

These are related by the following equations:

and

Where Va, Vb, and Vc are the original unbalanced voltages; a is a unit vector operator that rotates 120◦ in the counterclockwise direction; and V+a, V −a, and V0a are the positive, negative, and zero sequence components of the original unbalanced set.

Characteristics of Sequence Components
In a three-phase wye connected and ungrounded system, no zero sequence current flows. If the wye point is grounded, neutral carries the out-of-balance current. In a delta connection, no zero sequence currents can appear in the line currents.

In a balanced three-phase system with balanced loads, only positive sequence currents can flow. Negative sequence currents are set up in circuits of unbalanced impedances and voltages.

In symmetrical circuits, currents and voltages of different sequence do not affect each other (i.e., the positive sequence currents produce only positive sequence voltage drops and the theorem of superposition applies). Sequence impedance networks must be constructed for unbalanced fault current calculations and data input to digital computers.

As an example, the single-line-to-ground fault is given by the expression:
 


Where Ig is the single-line-to-ground fault current; E is the line-to-neutral voltage; and Z+, Z−, and Z0 are the positive, negative, and zero sequence impedances to the fault point.

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