A new approach to digital current differential protection for low and medium voltage feeder circuits using a digital voice-frequency grade communications channel

A new approach to digital current differential protection is described which provides the capabilities of conventional pilot wire differential protection while using the limited data transfer capabilities of a digital data voice-frequency grade communications channel. This approach compares polyphase polarised current measurements taken at the feeder´s terminals to detect faults and can trip in under two power system cycles. The algorithms decouple the measurements from the power system frequency and its waveform, and thereby have a high inherent tolerance to the complications introduced by communication channel delays and their fluctuations. For this project, the communications requirements have been limited to a full duplex 2400 bits/sec system suitable for operation over a voice-frequency grade channel