748

IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, Vol. 11, No. 2, April 1996

and Implementation of an Adaptive Single Pole Autoreclosure Technique for Transmission Lines using Artificial Neural Networks
D. S. Fitton R. W. Dunn R. K. Aggarwal (SM) A. T. Johns (SM) School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK. A. Bennett Reyrolle Protection, PO Box 8, Hebbum Tyne and Wear, NE31 lTZ, UK.

Keywords: transmission lines, single-pole tripping, adaptive

autoreclosure, artificial neural networks

Abstract Adaptive Single Pole AutoReclosure (SPAR) offers

many advantages over conventional techniques. In the case of transient faults, the secondary arc extinction time can be accurately determined and in the case of a permanent fault, breaker reclosure can be avoided.This paper describes, in some detail, the design and implementation of a SPAR technique using Artificial Neural Networks ( A " s ) . The design described includes special methods for extracting features from post-circuit breaker opening fault data, which is a prerequisite for setting up training data sets. The technique is then implemented in hardware based on a high performance T800 transputer system and some results obtained from laboratory tests of this equipment are presented.

1. INTRODUCTION
The most common faults on EHV transmission lines are single phase to ground type and for such faults SPAR provides an improvement in the overall operation of the transmission system [l]. Furthermore, SPAR may become imperative in applications where construction of additional circuits may not be possible due to environmental pressures and/or costs. However, with conventional SPAR, unsuccessful reclosure using a fixed dead time in the case of a transient fault, or reclosure onto a permanent fault, may aggravate the potential damage to the system and equipment. In this respect, adaptive SPAR offers many advantages such as increased rate of successful reclosure,improved system stability and a reduction in system and equipment shock under a permanent fault. Previous studies [2] have shown certain characteristic voltage waveforms that develop on the faulted phase during the secondary arc period, following the initial circuit breaker opening. In this respect there are many factors that affect
A,paper recommended and approved 95 SM 432-5 PWRD by the IEEE Power System Relaying Committee of the IEEE Power Engineering Society for presentation at the 1995 IEEE/PES Summer Meeting, J u l y 23-27, 1995, Portland, OR. Manuscript submitted November 15, 1994; made available for printing April 27, 1995.

these waveforms such as, line configuration, fault point on wave, fault location, pre-fault loading, source parameters and atmospheric conditions. The complexity of the functional relationship between these various factors precludes a simple algorithmic approach to the design of adaptive SPAR using traditional methods. There has been an upsurge in the application of A " s in power systems in recent years which has clearly demonstrated their ability in solving some long standing problems where conventional techniques have had difficulty or have been unable to meet functional requirements. However, their application in the development of new improved adaptive SPAR techniques is heavily dependent upon accurate models depicting the behaviour of power systems under faults. In this respect, the simulation models based on the well proven and widely accepted Electro-Magnetics Transient Program (EMTP) provides the necessary accuracy and realism. This software also has a facility whereby a realistic nonlinear secondary arc [3] can be embedded into the simulation. This paper describes developments in the analysis, design and implementationof an adaptive SPAR technique using A " s . The technique, initially designed using Computer-Aided Design (CAD) studies, includes a methodology adopted for identifying and extracting the characteristic features from the fault waveforms using Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) techniques. The faulted waveforms are based on the previously mentioned EMTP software with realistic modelling of all the line components, including nonlinear arc phenomenon and the effect of practical Capacitor Voltage Transformers (CVTs). Characteristic features form the training patterns for the chosen ANN architecture. The CAD technique is then accomplished in hardware based on the T800 transputer and the paper concludes by presenting some interesting results to illustrate its performance. For the latter, analogue voltage waveforms from a Programmable Transmission Line (PTL) for practically encountered faults on a typical 400kV application are considered. 2. ADAPTIVE SPAR CONCEPT

To clarify the objectives of using adaptive SPAR it is worth considering all the possible eventualities. For clarity only steady state comparisons are made here; some of the inherent advantages which result from the reduced dead times of an adaptive system are thus ignored. Quantification of potential results is essential to enable a real assessment and discussion of performance requirements and improvements. There are three possible conditions to be considered:1 Permanent fault (perm) 2 Transient fault (tran) 0885-8977/96/$05.00 0 1995 IEEE

749

Table 1 . THE OPTIONS AVAILABLE TO AN ADAPTIVE SPAR COMPARED TO THE CONVENTIONAL CASE.
(Shading denotes the ideal choice for the adaptive SPAR given the fault type.)

3 Incorrect trip (inc.tr) The third category of incorrect trip includes any trip which has occurred for no legitimate reason, such as a sympathy trip. Experience of EHV transmission [4] shows that typically 85 % of faults on EHV systems are transient in nature, and the rest are permanent. The possibility of incorrect tripping must be considered, and is often quantified in terms of dependability and security [5]. A typical value of incorrect tripping as a percentage of all trips might be 1 %. The possible outcomes of conventional versus adaptive protection, described in Table 1, are discussed using the conditional probability notation:-

reclose onto a permanent fault, ie:-

PJR berm) =O

(5)

The result of this ideal case is to prevent shocks to the system occurring in response to a permanent fault. However, in the worst possible case, the adaptive technique will always reclose onto permanent faults. As such, in this worst case, the performance of the adaptive system is only equal to that of the conventional system. The performance efficiency of an adaptive technique for permanent faults can be described as:-

P(Action o f circuit breaker IType o f fault) P(Action I Event)

(1)
(2)

In summary, on encountering a permanent fault, an adaptive

SPAR can only provide an improvement or no change in the performance of a conventional system because:-

(7)

Equation 1 is "the probability of 'Action of circuit breaker' occurring given that 'Type of fault' has occurred". Using the symbols:-

P(event) = probability of event occurring Pc = probability in the conventional case = probability in the adaptive case Pa R = reclose

B. Transientfault conditions In the case of a transient fault, a conventional protection system can either reclose successfully or reclose too soon, resulting in unsuccessful reclosure. Thus: -

Pc(Rs I trM)+Pc(Ru I trun)=l

(8)

Rs
R" NR
qC
TA

= reclose successful = reclose unsuccessful

=

no reclose

The choice of dead time affects the efficiency of the SPAR relay. The efficiency of the conventional system on encountering a transient fault can be described as:-

= conventional SPAR efficiency = adaptive SPAR efficiency

(9)

A. Permanent Fault Conditions First consider the case of a permanent fault. In the case of a conventional SPAR system, the probability of a reclose happening is equal to one for all classes of fault (excluding the possibility of maloperation of the SPAR):-

In the adaptive case the dead time is adjusted in real time so

as to attempt to minimise the probability of an unsuccessful reclosure. The adaptive circuit should, however, also minimise the possibility of not reclosing onto a permanent fault. The efficiency of an adaptive system can be described
~

P,(R Ipenn) = 1

(3)

as:-

In the adaptive case there is a choice of possible outcomes:-

Pa(R I penn)+Pa(NR I penn)=l

(4)
The adaptive SPAR will be more efficient in response to a transient fault than a conventional system i f -

The ideal situation is that the adaptive SPAR system does not

750

Or: Ill

Transient fault (fig la) Time

C. Incorrect Trip Conditions If protection equipment causes an incorrect trip, such as a sympathy trip, the circuit breakers will open on a healthy line. In a conventional SPAR circuit breaker reclosure will normally occur after a fixed dead time and the line is returned into service. An adaptive SPAR introduces, in theory, ihe possibility of choosing not to reclose onto the line. The conventional circuit always performs the correct action thus:-

Permanent fault (fig I 6)

-90
FiguFe 1TYPICALTRANSIENTAND PERMANENTFAULT VOLTAGE

Where the efficiency of the adaptive system is given by:-

WAVEFORMS

However the incorrect trip condition is mitigated by the fact that incorrect trips are usually the easiest to identify and, as such, adaptive SPAR can if necessary restore tripped lines more quickly than the conventional fixed dead time case.

D.All Fault Conditions

In summary for all types of fault, two performance criteria
can be applied. First, and considered more important, an adaptive SPAR scheme should increase the possibility of successful reclosure. This i s true if the following inequality from equations 6, 10 and 12 holds for all faults:-

fi@@.pa(Rs Itran) +P(inc.tr).P,(R 1inc.tr)

.p(tran).P,(R, [Pun) + P(inc.tr)

Another criteria is that the adaptive technique should reduce the possibility of shocking the power system by preventing unsuccessful reclosure. This occurs if the following inequality is true for all fault types:-

spacing, configuration, etc. Transient faults are simulated using a realistic arc model, in particular the secondary arc model which develops once the faulted phase line breakers have opened [3]. In the simulation of permanent faults, fault arc path impedances, typically up to about 200 ohms, are used. In any fault study voltages and currents seen at the end of a faulted h e depend on a number of different system parameters. These range from source and load parameters to fault location, fault inception angle, pre-fault loading, breaker opening time, etc. Thus in the generation of fault examples all of these factors are varied. The results presented here are for faults on a typical 400kV transmission system of the type encountered on the UK supergrid system [3]. The simulated voltage waveforms at the ends of the faulted line are modified by the CVT, analogue anti-aliasing filters and the quantisation process. It is vital that these band limiting and other effects are included in the CAD because of their significant influence on the primary system voltage. Fig. 1 typifies the simulated voltage waveforms measured on a faulted phase via a CVT for both transient and permanent

fadts.
For the particular transient case, shown in Fig. la, at the point marked A on the waveform a fault develops on the line and there is a subsequent reduction in the voltage. The protection system detects the fault and opens the circuit breakers at p i n t B. A secondary arc is then established and this can be seen extinguishing and re-striking, by the characteristic high frequency components in the waveform. Finally the arc extinguishes completely at point C . There remains a small system frequency voltage sinusoid component on the line after point C , which is due to electrostatic coupling between the faulted phase and the two healthy

3. SYSTEM SKMULATION
Due to a limited amount of practical fault data available, it is necessary to generate examples of fault waveforms using simulation. Simulations were carried out using the EMTP [6] software package, which can model the behaviour of a transmission line. The physical line construction must be described to the software, together with conductor type,

75 1 phases. After point C there is a DC offset on the line which is due to the stored charge at the point on wave at which the arc finally extinguished. In practice this primary voltage DC offset is attenuated by the effect of the CVT, but a lower than fundamental frequency surge can be seen. A permanent fault voltage waveform is shown in Fig. lb. The fault occurs at point A, and the protection trips the circuit breakers at point B. After the circuit breakers have tripped there is a small system frequency voltage induced onto the tripped phase. The magnitude of this voltage depends on how well the other two healthy phases are coupled to the faulted phase, and the fault impedance.

4. FEATURE EXTRACTION METHODS

ANN solutions often employ a pre-processing stage of feature extraction. The aim of feature extraction is to extract information from the data, in this case the fault simulation voltage waveforms, which can be used to identify the data as required. The data should be rendered into a form which makes the ANN more effective at making decisions and easier and faster to train. Typically this means that the amount of data is reduced and the data undergoes some form of a transformation. The feature extraction process takes information from the time domain voltage data which allows the correct decision to be made as when, if ever, to reclose. To examine the voltage waveforms a frequency decomposition approach was taken. This approach was adopted because the frequency spectra of the voltage waveforms v a + s with time, and this time varying spectra is indicative of the conditions on the line. The frequency decomposition method transforms the voltage magnitude against time, x(t), data into the voltage/frequency/time domain, X E t). There are many different methods for performing this transformation, many of which are discussed in [7]. A method called the Short Time Fourier Transform (STFT) [8] was employed in this research to examine the waveforms and aid the choice of a feature extraction scheme. This process uses a DFT on a window of data of length N points, then moves the window of data on by a number of points M, and then repeats the DFT. The output of this process is a series of frequency spectra from consecutive windows in the time domain. Using the STFT, the waveform is analyzed by taking a series of N point DFTs at intervals of MT,sec. The first window is calculated using an N point DFT; then the reference point is moved along M points and the process is repeated. If r represents the window number then the rth discrete frequency spectra is given by:-

Figure 2 3D PLOT

OF VOLTAGE MAGNlTUDE vs. FREQUENCY vs

TIME

was examined, certain characteristic behaviour was apparent. There is more high frequency energy while a secondary arc exists than when it has extinguished. The constant impedance permanent fault waveforms contain a small system frequency component only. Post arc transient fault waveforms contain a system frequency component usually larger than that of the permanent fault. The points A, B and C as described in section 3 are indicated in Fig. 2. A feature extraction method which measures the energy in five different frequency bands was used to implement the adaptive SPAR. The frequency bands chosen were selected by an iterative process of empirical and theoretical selection and subsequent testing with the ANN [9]. The chosen frequency bands were: 1 DC-20 HZ 2 30-70 HZ 3 80-120Hz 4 130-170Hz 5 170-220 HZ Each frequency domain snapshot of the system, r, can be associated with a particular desired outcome; "safe to reclose", or "do not reclose". Where a state transition occurs within a window, there is an ambiguity about which class the window is a member of, and as such these cases are omitted from the training set. Every other frequency domain feature set is combined with its desired outcome to produce a training set suitable for training the ANN.

5. ARTIFICIALNEURAL NETWORKS
The result, XJk,r), is a function of both frequency, ( k Q , and time, (rMTJ, and renders a 3D spectral portrait, examples of which can be seen in Fig. 2. When the frequency spectra for different waveforms of data The problem addressed here is essentially one of pattern recognition. Given a section of a waveform from a faulted transmission line, a decision must be made as to when, if ever, the faulted phase can be reclosed. One of the most

752

Hidden Layer

D.C.

__

50Hz

__

1 0 0 H z 150Hz-

200Hz-

Figure 3 NEURAL NETWORK ARCHITECTURE

effective types of ANN for pattern recognition is the feed forward multi-layer type network, trained using the error back propagation method (also known as the generalised delta rule). This type of ANN was chosen in this study because feed forward networks are fast at making decisions and can be trained 'off line' by presenting examples. The ANN is made up from a number of simple processing elements or nodes, which are connected to other nodes by weights. For a node with N inputs, xi,and weights, wi , a bias 8 , and a firing rule F(z), the output Y is given by:N

Y=F( ~ x i w i + O )
i=o

with them which amplify the signal travelling along theh. By adjusting these weights, the network learns to provide the required output for a given input. In the feed forward architecture, the nodes are grouped in layers with the outputs from nodes in one layer being connected to the inputs of nodes in the next. The connections are unidirectional, so that a signal is presented to the input layer, and propagates through the hidden layer(s) to the output layer. The nodes in the input layer have a linear transfer function, not a nonlinear firing rule, and act as a scaling stage to the inputs data. Scaling also occurs at the output node to make the output to lie in the range of 0 to 1. The ideal network architecture depends on the problem being addressed. The number of inputs to the network is detennined by the features chosen. Having one or more hidden layers in the ANN topology allows the network to make more complex associations between input and output [lo]. The number of nodes required in the hidden layer(s) depends on the complexity of the relationship between the inputs and outputs. There is no defrnite way of pre-determining the optimum network size and architecture, without trying and testing different configurations. A neural network with five inputs, corresponding to the energy in five frequency bands was used. The network had one hidden layer and an output layer with one node. The number of nodes in the hidden layer was varied and good performance on the test set was obtained with between five and nine nodes. The results here use a network with seven nodes in the hidden layer, and the layers are fully connected, as shown in Fig 3. In summary ANNs are good at performing pattern recognition, can cope with previously unencountered situations and are robust in the presence of noise. Also, because the processing information of the network is stored in a distributed manner among the weights, neural networks can still function, albeit with some degradation, if parts of the network are malfunctioning.

Y is a value which lies in a range determined by the transfer function, in this case the hyperbolic tangent tanh(x). The bias allows the transfer function to be shifted and can be considered as a weighted signal from an output which is always one for training purposes. The connections between the nodes have weights associated

5. PRACTICAL IMPLEMENTATION
A prototype hardware has been built by Bath University in conjunction with Reyrolle Protection Ltd (RP), illustrated in Fig. 4. The prototype is based on an existing RP modular protection hardware design, with the addition of a new

Faulted phase
Eaable and Phase Selection
I
...._____..... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . ....___.____..... .. .. . .. . . .
I

N& Network
Figure 4 BLOCK DIAGRAM OF ADAPTIVE SPAR CIRCUIT

Trip and lock out

753

transputer based processor card. The neural network and feature extraction software processes and assorted control logic run on the transputer card. The adaptive SPAR prototype samples three voltage phase waveforms at 600Hz and digitally selects the faulted phase, from programmed status inputs. The most recent N samples one full cycle at the power frequency are passed to the feature extraction process, which measures the energy contained in the five frequency bands. These features are passed to the ANN input layer which scales the values to fall within a suitable range for the activation function used. The ANN calculates a scaled output value in a range of 0 to 1, that indicates the class in which the network considers the input to be. The window of data from which the features are calculated is then moved on by M points, as in equation 18, in this case 1 point. In a practical system the output of the network would be compared with a threshold value over some period of time, ie. some number of consecutive outputs of the network, and then a decision would be made whether to reclose, or trip the two healthy phases and lock out. In this prototype, an input is presented to the network and an output generated every twelfth of a cycle (1/600sec). The values of N and M (equation 18) used were 12 and 1 respectively. The 12 bit analogue to digital converter uses filters to prevent aliasing around the sampling frequency with a cut off frequency of around 230Hz. Included in the prototype is a timer which causes the relay to trip the two healthy phases and lock out if reclosure is not initiated within a prescribed time.

6. RESULTS OF ANALOGUE AND DIGITAL TESTS

In the engineering of an ANN solution to a problem, it is

essential to test the network on previously unseen data. The output from the ANN software was measured over a test set of 40,000training cases. Analogue tests were carried out from voltage signals generated by a PTL. These voltage signals were at nominally 63.5V rms, the substation voltage which the circuit would expect to meet in practice under full system voltage. The PTL was driven by simulated waveforms from the EMTP software package. The transputer processor has hardware links which provide a channel through which results were taken from the adaptive SPAR in real time operation. The CAD modelling of the input transformers, filters and the quantisation process were proved by comparing theoretical and actual input circuit responses. The output of the network was trained to be 0.1 to indicate do not reclose and 0.9 to indicate safe to reclose. The actual output of the network varies between zero and one. The output of the ANN in the relay in response to a typical transient fault voltage is shown in Fig. 5. It can be seen that the NN output switches from low to high when a full cycle of post secondary arc waveform is encountered. A typical permanent fault is shown in Fig. 6 with the corresponding output from the neural network. The permanent fault illustrated here is a 100 ohm bolted fault and it is seen that, as required, the ANN output remains at the desired low level. A graph of the normalised density of the output of the network over the test set is shown in Fig. 7. This displays the number of outputs of the ANN over the range of all the possible values, normalised to unity area. It can be seen from Fig. 7 that there is a wider spread of values around the high condition than around the low condition. In general the errors that occurred are grouped around transitions of state in the behaviour of the tripped phase. For

Volts (V.)

Volts (v.)

Network Output
/&nu\

Time

r"\
Figure6 OUTPUT RESPONSE OF NEURAL NETWORK TO A PERMANENT FAULT VOLTAGE WAVEFORM

Figure5 OUTPUT RESPONSE OF NEURAL NETWORK TO A TRANSIENT FAULT VOLTAGE WAVEFORM

,754 well, with the only significant errors appearing during the final extinction of secondary arcing. With the addition of the constraint that a contiguous number of outputs of the neural network would be examined before a decision was made, the technique correctly classified all of the simulated examples. The simulations consisted of various configurations of line and system. The introduction of low levels of noise into the voltage waveforms did not significantly degrade the performance of the neural network. The next step is to obtain field data to test the adaptive SPAR technique with real world data. Another reason to collect data is to measure the noise characteristics on the system and to include these in the CAD studies.

g 0.3
3

0.2
. 3

0.1 0

8 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

0.2

0.4

0.6

0 . 8

output value
Figure 7 NEURAL NETWORK OUTPUT DENSITY OVER TEST SET

The authors would like to acknowledge the financial and other support for this project provided by the Engi.neering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) and Reyrolle Protection Ltd. and the facilities at the University of Bath.

example, in Fig. 5 it can be seen that the A " ' s output change from the low state into the high state is not immediate. The band limiting effect of the CVT causes a phase delay in frequency components which compounds these transitional errors. For this reason the output of the ANN is compared to a threshold over a number of contiguous outputs, P,before a decision is made. The constraint that the network output must be above a threshold for P contiguous samples makes the decision to reclose more robust. With P set to the period of the fundamental frequency and a threshold of 0.5, the adaptive SPAR always correctly classified the fault type and instigated the correct action; thus from equations 6, 10 and 15:-

9 REFERENCES
[l] IEEE Committee report "Single phase tripping and auto reclosing of transmission lines "IEEE Trans. PWRD-1, pp. 182-192, 1992. [2] Y.H.Song, R.K.Agganva1, A.T.Johns, "Digital simulation of the effects of fault and circuit breaker arcs on power system fault transients" Proc. 27th UPEC (UK) 189-192, 1992 [3] A.T.Johns, R.K.Agganva1, Y.H.Song, "Improved technique for modelling fault arcs on faulted EHV transmission systems", IEE Proc. Gener. Trans. Distrb. 1994, pp 148-121 [4] A. R. van C. Warrington. "Protective Relays: Theory and application", 1977, J. Wiley and sons, ISBN 0 412 15380 7 IS] J,Lewis Blackburn, "Protective Relaying: Principles and applications pp 21-22 ". 1987 Marcel Dekker, ISBN. 08247-7445-0 [6j H. W. Dommel, "Electro magnetics transients program", August 1986 Boneville Power Administration, USA. [7] Riou1,A. Vetterli,M. "Wavelets and signal processing"JEEE Signal Processing magazine,pp 14-38 October 1991. [81 Hlawatsch,F. Boudreaux-Bartels,G. F. "Linear and quadratic time-frequency signal representations" IEEE Signal Processing magazine,pp 21-67 April 1992. [9] Fitton,D.S. Dunn,R.W. Agganva1,R.K. Johns,A.T. Li, H.Y. "Feature extraction from voltage and current waveforms." Proc 29th UPEC (UK) 1994 [lo] J. A.Anderson, E,Rosenfeld, (Editors) "Neurocomputing: Foundations of research", pp 673-696 1989, MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-01097-6

P(NR bm) =1 P(R, Itran)= 1 p(R I inc.tr)= 1

(20)

This was measured digitally over the whole of the test set of simulated faults. Due to the time that would be required, not all of the 40,000 cases of the test set were generated as analogue voltages. The waveforms which were generated gave results that were always within 3% of the digital tests, and performed equally well when using the threshold over multiple cycles criteria. The above results were taken in the absence of noise. The effect of small amounts of gausian noise is to increase the spread of the output values, without degrading the performance of the adaptive SPAR circuit.

7 . CONCLUSIONS
In this paper the results of performing analogue tests on an adaptive SPAR prototype are presented. The adaptive SPAR prototype was tested on sifnulations of previously unencountered faults and the technique proposed performed

David Fitton received the degree of BEng in 1991 from the University of Bath. He is currently working for his Phd at

755
the University of Bath in the Power and Energy Systems Group. His main areas of interest are Artificial Intelligence and Neural Networks applied to control classification and prediction.

Rod Dunn received his BSc and PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Bath in 1981 and 1984 respectively. He became a lecturer in computing and control
at the University of Bath and is now a member of the Power and Energy Systems Group. His research areas include parallel and real time computing, power system modelling and control using AI methods. He has published over 30 technical papers and is involved in the IEE UK.

Rqj Agganval obtained the degrees of BEng and PhD from the University of Liverpool, UK, in 1970 and 1973 respectively. He then joined the Power Systems Group at the University of Bath,where he is now a Reader. His main areas of interest are power system modelling and the application of digital techniques and artificial intelligence to protection and control. He has published over 130 technical papers and is an active member of the IEE UK.

Allan Johns received the degrees of BSc and PhD from the
University of Bath and in 1982 was awarded the degree of DSc for an original and substantial contribution to knowledge of Electrical Engineering. He is currently Professor of Electrical Engineering and Head of School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the University of Bath. He is the author of over 200 publications in the area of Electrical Power Systems and is a fellow of the IEE UK.

Alan Bennett is currently the research manager of Reyrolle Protection and has attained considerable experience of protection design during his 30 years association with the company. He is the UK representative on CIGRE 34.02
Adaptive Protection working group.

correctly right at the outset, then it generalises for all situations; this effectively means that it is then capable of always recognising the key features in the waveforms. The technique described in this paper has been tested for a very large number of practically S. H. Horowitz (3143 Griggsview C o u r t , Columbus, OH encountered different system and fault conditions, including using 43221-4612): real data gathered from a practical transmission system of a totally The authors have described a unique and potentially powerful diagnosticto prevent autoreclosureinto a single phaseto-ground fault. I would like to mgg& that t h e . different line configuration (including a different voltage level) authors have restricted the value of this technique. The tool is more powerhl than from that for which the NN was originally trained; this technique described. Sigle phase faults, either initially or upon reclosing, do not present a v e q gave correct performance in all cases tested, thereby re-enforcing serious threat to system stability or to equipment integrity. I appreciate that the authors the previous point that this technique is very robust and is virtually are concerned with single phase tripping which is a common practice.in Europe but insensitive to changes in system and/or fault conditions. suggest that ifthe authors extended the technique to considerthrespbase tripping they
would add another dimension to the value of their concept. This discusserCO-authored a paper [l]which describes three phase trips, (a more common practice in theU.S.) and single phase reclose which would test the system to determine S a permanaa fault exis&. The technique descnied in reference 1 used voltage measurements made after one phase was energized. We recognized several limitations at that time; transposed lines offered some di5culties, calculations had to be made for each situationto establishthe voltages to be measured. Is the authors techniques more general and could it be applied in every situation without individual studies? If so, then the advantage of never reclosing into any fault more severe than single phase-to-ground or phase-to-phase would offer very significant advantages to system planning and operation In the US., w i t h the associated long lines, single phase tripping usually requires shunt reactor compensation to extinguish the secondary arc. Hive the authors examined the waveforms that would result with the use of such shunt reactors? Reference 1-Adaptive Transmission System Relaying, S.H. Horowitz, A.G. Phadke, J.S.Thorp, EEE Trans Power Delively,vol3, no.4, pp1436-1445, O c t , 1 9 8 8 .

Discussion

We fully agree with the discusser that the technique described in this paper is potentially very powerful if it could also be applied to transmission systems employing three-phase autoreclosure for all types of faults, including single-phase-earth (this is the standard practice adopted in many countries in order to essentially simplify circuit breaker mechanism). We at Bath had already identified this potential benefit quite some time ago and there has been ongoing work by the authors in this very area; the investigations carried out so far look very promising and it is hoped that the results of this research will be published in another paper at a later. Concerning the application of the -based adaptive autoreclosure technique to long distance transmission lines employing shuntreactor compensation and single-pole autoreclosure, it is well known that the voltage waveform patterns associated with such systems under faults (in particular single-phase-earth faults) are very distinctly different from those encountered on short plain feeders. In the case of the former, characteristic low frequency bearing phenomenon is apparent and is due to the fact that in shunt compensated lines, the recovery voltage (after the faulted phase breakex opening) contains a sinusoidal power frequency component which is modulated by a much lower frequency voltage component associated with the natural frequency of the line capacitance/reactor inductance combination; the NN topology and the training patterns are therefore somewhat different from those employed in plain feeder applications; these have been discussed in some detail by the authors in reference [l] which also clearly illustrates that a NN can be used as an effective strategy in the development of adaptive autoreclosure schemes for long distance transmission lines with shunt reactor compensation. Reference 1 YH Song, RK Aggarwal, AT Johns, RW Dunn, DS Fitton: Adaptive autoreclosure technique for longdistance compensated transmission systems using a neural network approach, Proceedings 28th Universities Power Engineering Conference, Vol. 1 September 1993, pp 146-149. Manuscript received October 17, 1995.

Manusdript received August 2, 1995.

D.S. FITTON, R.W. DUNN, R.K. AGGARWAL, A.T. JOHNS, A. BENNETT: The authors would like to thank the discusser for

his interesting comments and questions. Whilst it is true that single-pole tripping associated with singlephase-earth faults is less onerous than three-phase tripping from a system stability point of view, however, the main attribute of the neural network-based technique described in this paper is in its ability to inhibit breaker reclosure altogether when the fault is permanent, thereby preventing a second shock to the system and expensive equipment; in practice of course, for faults other than single-phase-earth, all three phases are tripped. Although not discussed in this paper, an extensive series of studies have revealed that if that were to be the case ie, if all three phases were to be tripped for faults other than single-phase-&, then this technique would still be able to correctly distinguish between transient and permanent faults. Moreover, in the case of a transient fault, the secondary arc extinction time (albeit very short in comparison to that associated with single-pole tripping) would also be accurately identified. With regard to the question of whether the technique is generic enough in terms of its application to different situations without individual studies, a neural network OUN) is a pattern classifier and if the topology and the training pattems have been chosen