TYPICAL PRIMARY PLANT BUSBAR LAYOUT DESIGNS FOR HV & EHV SUBSTATIONS

These schemes are adopted based on ease of operation & maintenance, availability & reliability of
system.

DOUBLE BUS SCHEMES

Double bus bar schemes have advantage over Single Busbar schemes as it is possible to shift the
Feeder bays from one bus to another in case of a bus fault or for taking maintenance outage of a
Busbar or for expansion/addition of Feeder bays.

Three types of Double Busbar schemes are in practice commonly which is:

Single-CB Double bus scheme (Feeder bay is connected to a particular bus by means of two
Bus Isolators). This scheme has two bus Isolators per Feeder bay which have fault making
and load switching capability. CBs are used for fault breaking duty. Total loss of Substation is
prevented by means of selective switching of Bus Isolators for individual feeder bays. During
a bus fault only those feeder bays which are connected to faulted bus are tripped leaving
other feeder bays in service. After that it is possible to switch the tripped Feeder bays to un-
faulted bus. This results in brief interruption of Feeder bays on a bus fault. Such schemes will
have Bus Coupler & or Bus section CBs to minimize the impact of bus faults on number of
feeder bays. Bus couplers also are required to prevent two buses operated in ‘Electrical’
isolation (split bus) and Substation has one ‘system’ of voltage & frequency. This scheme is
used in HV & EHV Substations.

Double-CB Double bus scheme (Feeder bay is connected to a particular bus by means of two
Bus CBs). This scheme has two CBs per Feeder bay which have fault making and breaking
capability. During a bus fault only those CBs which are connected to faulted bus are tripped
leaving other CBs in service. This results in no interruption of Feeder bays on a bus fault. Bus
coupler CBs may or may not be provided in these schemes as it is common practice to close
both CBs for each feeder bay (thereby reducing the external fault current flow through CB to
one half) which results in less CB maintenance. This scheme is used in HV & EHV Substations
with critical feeder bays.

Two main and a Transfer bus scheme (this is modification of above indicated Double busbar
schemes with an additional transfer bus). This scheme will have additional bus with
additional CB(s) & by-pass isolators. This scheme allows faster restoration of system in case
of emergency by means of minimum protection and allows maintenance of Feeder bay CBs.
This is particularly used in major Power Plant Switchyards.

In all cases, in HV & EHV systems it is required to have both buses tied together electrically.