Self-adaptive transformer differential protection

Setting the pickup current and slope of differential relays of power transformer protection is a well-known compromise. It has been the focus of study to improve both the security and sensitivity of transformer differential protection recently. However, it is difficult to achieve a high degree of security and sensitivity at the same time by conventional percentage restraint differential criteria based on a fixed predetermined characteristic curve. Therefore a novel adaptive protection criterion is proposed in this study, which can self-regulate the parameters of percentage differential characteristic (e.g. pickup current, restraint coefficient and restraint current at the knee point of the slope characteristic) on the basis of operating conditions of power transformers. The test results show that the proposed scheme provides a high operating sensitivity on internal faults, while retaining higher security on all external faults. Furthermore, because of self-regulation of the setting values of relays, it is more convenient for engineers in the field who only need to give the upper and lower limits but not the exact value of the settings of protective relay.