Why Upgrade the Protection and Grounding of Generators at Petroleum and Chemical Plants?

Significant changes have occurred in the protection and grounding of generators in the past 15 years that impact generators at petroleum refineries and chemical plants. This paper updates the author´s earlier paper on the subject of generator protection upgrades and highlights areas of protection that are still not addressed by some generator owners, as well as new protection areas not previously addressed. New generator protection changes are reflected in recent IEEE guides such as C37.102-2006. This paper discusses these changes as they apply to industrial generators and the risks of ignoring them. This paper outlines the risks in several functional areas where old generator electromechanical relay protection is inadequate. In addition, this paper discusses hybrid grounding of the generator stator windings, which substantially reduces stator ground fault damage - avoiding lengthy generator outages to repair. This type of grounding is a relatively new concept in generator grounding introduced in a series of IEEE Industry Applications Society (IAS) Working Group papers publicized in 2002. This grounding scheme has been installed on a number of generators but must be coupled with proper relaying and transient overvoltage protection. This paper also highlights the major new protection requirements for gas turbine starting with a load commutating inverter and protection advances made possible by the use of digital technology, which have fostered new methods not possible with older technologies.