RESEARCH PAPER
International Journal of Recent Trends in Engineering, Vol 1, No. 3, May 2009
Simplified Velocity MPSO for Directional Over
Current Relay Coordination
D. Vijayakumar1 and R. K. Nema1
1
Department of Electrical Engineering, MANIT, Bhopal, India
Email: vijayakumar_nitb@yahoo.co.in
Email: rk_nema@yahoo.com
Abstract—Particle Swarm Optimization, a recently more
popular optimizer utilizes the swarm behavior in searching
for an optimum. The classical/standard PSO (SPSO)
algorithm is normally used for unconstrained optimization
tasks. The Directional Over-Current Relay (DOCR)
Coordination problem is a highly constrained optimization
problem, therefore the SPSO in its original form cannot be
used to solve it. The reported MPSO deal with constraints
using a complex repair algorithm therefore the solution and
speed of convergence achieved is not very optimistic. The
method employed here provides better results both in terms
of the speed of convergence and global optimal solution
because of simplified velocity update process in proposed
PSO algorithm with simplified cut down approach of
constraints handling. Both these modifications are reported
in this present work and the results are compared with the
already reported MPSO. The method introduced here is
known as SV-MPSO and gives very optimistic results in
terms of the global best feasible solution with very fast
convergence rate.
Index Terms— Over current protection, Relay
Coordination, Swarm Intelligence, Linear Programming,
Particle Swarm Optimization, Cognitive Behavior.
I. INTRODUCTION
Directional over current (DOC) relays are commonly
used in protection of transmission lines. The most vital
task when installing directional over current relays on the
system is to select suitable settings such that their
fundamental protective function is met under the
requirements of sensitivity, selectivity, reliability and
speed. Directional over current relays have two types of
settings: Time Dial Setting (TDS) and Pickup Current
Setting (Ip). The problem of determining the Time Dial
Setting of directional over current relays using
optimization techniques was first stated in 1988 [1]. Since
the sixties, a great effort has been devoted for solving the
problem using computer simulation. Three approaches
have been used for determining the optimal setting of
directional over current relays: Trail and Error approach
[2], Topological analysis approach [3, 4] and
optimization approach. In the optimization approach,
some researchers used Non Linear Programming (NLP)
for determining the optimal values for pickup current and
D. Vijayakumar Research Scholar is with the Department of Electrical
Engineering, Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology
(MANIT), Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India, Pincode - 462 007. (E-mail:
vijayakumar_nitb@yahoo.co.in).
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time dial settings. The nonlinear programming may lead
to infeasible solution due to the rounding of to the nearest
pickup current setting. The problem is then deal as a
Linear Programming (LP) by taking the pick-up current
setting as known variable and optimizing for time dial
settings under given coordination constraints. It has been
shown in literature, that the Linear Programming
technique can be successfully applied to this problem,
guaranteeing minimum possible settings of the relays that
could satisfy the time coordination constraints [1, 5-7].
These constraints are then solved by an optimization
method in order to achieve minimum time setting of each
relay. Some of the optimization methods that have been
used for the above problem are: simplex method, two
phase simplex method and dual simplex method. The
problem may also be solved using Genetic Algorithm
(GA) [8].
Recently several efforts has been devoted to the
automation of the coordination process of the directional
over current relays and distance relays in interconnected
power system networks using digital computers. In recent
years, a new optimizer proposed for DOCRs coordination
problem makes use of the swarm behavior in searching
for an optimal solution. This new Evolutionary
Computation (EC) technique was proposed by Kennedy
and Eberhart [9] in 1995 and is known as Particle Swarm
Optimizer (PSO). Many power system optimization
problems are solved by this PSO technique like GA. The
PSO algorithm has superiority to other Evolutionary
Algorithms (EA) in terms of memory and computational
time requirements as it relies on very simple
mathematical operations which requires very few lines of
computer code to implement it. The PSO is a relatively
new technique and has been empirically shown to have
performed well on many power system optimization
problems including relay coordination. The Modified
version of PSO techniques known as MPSO has also been
proposed for DOCR coordination problem. To deal with
the constraints of DOCR coordination problem a repair
algorithm is introduced in reported MPSO technique.
This paper presents the solution to directional over
current relay coordination problem using the simplified
velocity update Modified Particle Swarm Optimization
with cut down approach. The development and
implementation of the proposed algorithm on the case
study gives superior results in terms of global best
solution and convergence speed when compared with the
MPSO reported in the literature. In this paper the
RESEARCH PAPER
International Journal of Recent Trends in Engineering, Vol 1, No. 3, May 2009
simplified velocity update PSO with cut down approach pickup current) is the ratio of the relay fault current I, to
algorithm proposed for the Directional Over Current the pickup current value, i.e. M=I/Ip. In the application
Relay coordination and results are compared with the reported in this paper, the over current relay conforms to
published MPSO results. This show the algorithm able to the IEC characteristic [10] as:
give global optimal solution to the relay coordination K1 × TDS
problem stated as linear programming problem. T= (4)
⎡⎛ I sc
K
⎞ 2 ⎤
⎢⎜ ⎟ +K 3 ⎥
II. DIRECTIONAL OVER CURRENT RELAY COORDINATION ⎢⎝ CT Ratio × Ip ⎠ ⎥
⎣ ⎦
PROBLEM FORMULATION
where, K1, K2 and K3 are constants that depends on the
In general, the directional over current relay has two relay characteristic (inverse, very inverse extremely
units, an instantaneous unit (time independent) and an inverse, etc., ).
inverse over current unit (time dependent). The over It is worth to mention that over current relays allow for
current unit has two values to be set, the Pickup Current continuous time dial setting but discrete pickup current
value (Ip) and the Time Dial Setting (TDS). The pickup settings. The entire relay were assumed identical and with
current value is the minimum current value for which the a characteristic function approximated by:
relay operates. 0.14 × TDSi
Ti = (5)
A. Statement of the Problem Formulation ⎡ ⎛ Iik ⎞
0.02 ⎤
⎢⎜ ⎟ − 1⎥
The relay coordination problem can be stated as a ⎢⎝ CT ratio × Ipi ⎠ ⎥
parametric optimization problem. For the protective relay ⎣ ⎦
coordination problem, the main objective is to calculate where Iik is the short circuit current passing through the
the optimal values of TDS and Ip which would minimize relay and Ipi is the pickup current settings of the relay Ri.
the time of operation of the relays. The function to be B. Linear Programming Problem
optimized is the operating time of the primary relay
ensuring backup/primary relays coordination subjected to From (5) one can see that the relation between the
specified coordination time interval. One possible operating time T of the time over current relay unit and
approach to achieve minimum shock to the faulty system the multiple pickup current M is nonlinear. Since the
would be to minimize a sum of operating times of all multiple pickup current of the relay can be
primary relays expecting that individual primary relays predetermined, so it is a fixed M, (5) becomes linear as
operating time would be close to the minimum. The follows:
coordination problem can be stated as follows: T=a * TDS (6)
' where
Min ∑ Wi Tik (1) K1
where Tik indicates the operation time of primary relay Ri a= (7)
K2
for a fault in zone k and Wi is a coefficient which M -1
indicates the probability of the occurrence of the fault on By substitution in (1), the objective function becomes
n
a line and is usually set to 1. The objective function is min ∑ ai × TDSi (8)
minimized subject to the following constraints. i=1
Here the only variable in the objective function TDS
a. Coordination Criteria
by minimizing the TDS we can able to minimize the
For Coordination of a protective scheme a predefined operating time of the primary relays with the satisfying
Coordination Time Interval (CTI) must collapses before the coordination between the primary and backup relays.
the backup scheme comes into action. This CTI depends
upon type of relays, speed of the circuit breaker and other III PARTICLE SWARMOPTIMIZATION
parameters.
Tbackup -T primary ≤ CTI (2) The original PSO algorithm is discovered through
simplified social model simulation. PSO as introduced by
where Tbackup is the operation time of the backup relay Rn Kennedy and Eberhart [9]. It has its roots in swarm
of relay Ri for a given fault in the protection zone k. CTI intelligence. The motivation behind the algorithm is the
is the chosen to be equal to 0.2 seconds. intelligent collective behavior of organisms in a swarm
b. Bounds on the relay setting and operation times (e.g., a flock of birds migrating), while the behavior of a
single organism in the swarm may seem totally
Upper and lower bounds are set on the TDS, Ip and inefficient. The bird would find food through social
time of operation of relay and are given below cooperation with other birds around it (with in
TDSijmin ≤ TDSij ≤ TDSijmax neighborhood).
Ipijmin ≤ Ipij ≤ Ipijmax (3) PSO represents an optimization method where
particles collaborate as a population to reach a collective
Timin ≤ Ti ≤ Timax goal. Each n-dimensional particles xi is a potential
c. Relay Characteristics solution to the collective goal, usually to optimize a
function f. Each particle in the swarm can memorize its
The time dial setting defines the operation time (T) of current position that is determined by evolution of the
the device for each current value, and is normally given objective function, velocity and the best position visited
as a curve T Vs M. where, M (i.e. the multiple of the during the search space referred to the personal best
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RESEARCH PAPER
International Journal of Recent Trends in Engineering, Vol 1, No. 3, May 2009
position (pbest), this search is based on probabilistic,
rather than deterministic, transition rules. A particle xi has
memory of the best solution yi that it has found, called its
personal best; it flies through the search space with a
velocity vi dynamically adjusted according to its personal
best and the global best (gbest) solution ŷ found by the
rest of the swarm (called the gbest topology) [11-13].
Let i indicate a particle’s index in the swarm, such that
S={x1, x2, . . ., xs} is a swarm of particles. During iteration
of the PSO algorithm, the personal best yi of each particle
is compared to its current performance, and set to the
better performance. If the objective function to be
minimized is defined as f: → , then [14]
n algorithm velocity equations (9) of section III is
Traditionally, each particles velocity is updated
separately for each dimension j. After that, each particle
is allowed to update its position using its current velocity
to explore the problem search space for a better solution
as follows:
vij(t+1)=ω*vij(t)+c1*round1()[pbestij(t) -xij(t) ]
(9)
+c2 *roun2()[gbestij(t) -xij(t) ]
xij(t+1)=vij(t) +xij(t) (10)
The stochastic nature of the algorithm is determined by
round1() and round2(), two uniform random numbers
between zero and one. These random numbers scaled by
acceleration coefficient c1 and c2. The inertia weight ω
was introduced to improve the convergence rate of the
PSO algorithm [15]. Usually, the value of the velocity is
clamped to the range [-vmax, vmax] to reduce the possibility
that the particle might fly out the search space. If the
space is defined by the bounds [xmin, xmax], then the value
of vmax is typically set so that vmax=h*xmax, where 0.1≤h≤1.
The value of inertia weight assumed to decrease linearly
form ωmax to ωmin during the course of run up to
maximum iteration count.
If itermax ≤ iter then ⎫ For each particle {
⎪ Calculate particle velocity using (12) and (10)
(ωmin -ωmax )
ω= *(iter-1)+ωmax ⎪⎪
(itermax -1) (11)
⎬
else ⎪ attained
⎪
ω=ωmin ⎪⎭
where iter is the current iteration, ωmax is the maximum
inertia weight and ωmin is the minimum inertia weight.
IV SV-MPSO WITH CUT DOWN APPROACH
A computer program is developed and written in
MATLAB to implement SV-MPSO with the objective of
minimum total operating time of all DOCRs and by
considering the constraints of section II. The simplified
velocity update process of proposed algorithm and the cut
down approach of Constraints handling is described in
this section. The relay coordination problem is solved
iteratively for optimal minimum time of operation.
A. Simplified Velocity Update MPSO
Prominent among the merits of PSO is the simplicity
of mathematical model, leading to fast solution of the
problem under study. The cognitive and social behavior
of birds in the swarm helps them to locate food and
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essentially is the constituent of the foraging activity
which involve their personal and global best
achievements. The cognitive behavior represented by
pbest of the individual particle by eliminating this from
the velocity process for proposed SV-MPSO algorithm.
The present work introduces the compact version of
Standard PSO called simplified velocity update Modified
particle swarm optimization (SV-MPSO) to attain
optimal settings of directional over current relays within
the constraints satisfaction. The SV-MPSO proposed
algorithm is based on only social behavior of the swarm
such that it flies out towards better solution. The PSO
mathematically modified as for SV-MPSO algorithm:
vij(t+1)=ω*vij(t) +c1*roun1()[gbestij(t) -xij(t) ] (12)
Although the SV-MPSO stems from minor
modification of standard PSO, it behaves well as an
optimization problem solver. In the present work, the SV-
MPSO is implemented for DOCR coordination and its
effectiveness over the published MPSO is proved through
a case study on 6 bus case study system. The Fig. 1
shows the SV-MPSO algorithm of solving the general
constrained optimization problem.
For each particle {
Do {
Initialize particle
} While particle is in the feasible space (i.e., it satisfies all
the constraints)
}
Do {
For each particle { (Constraints handling )
Calculate fitness value, set current value as the new gbest of the
individual personal pest value
}
Choose the particle with the best fitness value of the all particles
as the gbest
Update particle position using (10)
}
} while maximum iterations or minimum error criteria is not
Fig. 1 Proposed SV-MPSO algorithm
B. Cut Down approach of Constraints handling
The method is implemented to handle constraints of
the relay coordination optimization problem and is found
to be more efficient while updating particles for solution
into a feasible domain. If any particles of an individual
violate its constraints then it is fixed to its
maximum/minimum value (cut down value) according to
its objective function minimum/maximum. This method
is used for handling the constraints for modified particle
swarm optimization to solve directional over current relay
coordination and give the result of global optimal
solution.
⎧ xik if satisfying all constraints
⎪
⎪
xik = ⎨ xik,min if not satisfying constraints,(max problem)
⎪ k
⎪⎩ xi,max if not satisfying constraints,(min problem)
RESEARCH PAPER
International Journal of Recent Trends in Engineering, Vol 1, No. 3, May 2009
V EXPERIMENTAL AND RESULT DISCUSSION TABLE II
This section is discusses the case study 6 bus power CT RATIO FOR THE 6-BUS SYSTEM
system and show the effectiveness of the proposed SV- Relay CT Pick-up Relay CT Pick-up
MPSO algorithm is described here (i) MPSO with repair No Ratio Tap No Ratio Tap
algorithm [30] (ii) SV-MPSO with cut down approach. 1 1200/5 0.8 8 800/5 0.8
2 800/5 0.8 9 800/5 0.5
The results in all the two cases are tabulated and 3 800/5 1.0 10 600/5 1.0
discussed. 4 800/5 0.5 11 800/5 1.0
5 800/5 0.5 12 800/5 1.5
A. Six-bus case study System 6 1200/5 0.5 13 1200/5 0.5
The system under study is a 6 bus system as shown in 7 800/5 1.0 14 800/5 1.0
Fig. 2. The 3-phase faults are applied at the near-end of
B. Simplified Velocity Modified Particle Swarm
each phase relay (close in faults). For the investigation of
Optimization
optimal setting of DOCR coordination problem, the pre-
fault (load) current is neglected and the fault inception This experiment is performed with the case study
time is at the start of the simulation. i.e., at t=0. The system to show the effectiveness of the proposed
primary/backup (P/B) relay pairs and fault currents are algorithm over the already published work. In the
given in the Table I. The CT ratios for the pickup current proposed SV-MPSO algorithm with cut down approach,
setting are given in the Table II. The phase relays used in and the changes in equation (12) velocity update process
network are the Westinghouse Co-9 that can be modeled ‘personal best’ (pbest) of individual particle is removed
by (5). The TDS are assumed to vary between a minimum without altering its gbest value. The first iteration fitness
value of 0.5 and maximum value of 11. In this system the function value is 133.74030 seconds, considering this as
transient configuration is neglected. The coordination gbest the algorithm proceeds for finding the optimal
time interval CTI is taken as 0.2 [19]. The PSO solution in remaining iterations shown in Fig. 3. This
parameters used during the simulation are number of proposed SV-MPSO method is very fast and gives the
iterations 30; c1 and c2 are 2.1 equally, inertia weight global best solution in 240th iteration itself and the
minimum 0.4 and maximum 0.9 and vmax is 2 optimal solution result is tabulated in Table III. The
algorithm proposed here has fastest convergence and
thereby computation time involved is less as well shown
in Fig. 3, which is a plot between the objective function
values against the number of iterations.

Fig. 2 6-Bus power system

TABLE I
P/B PAIRS FOR THE 6-BUS SYSTEM Fig. 3 Simulation result of Objective function value
Backup Fault Primary Fault TABLE III
Relay Current(kA) Relay Current(kA) RESULTS OF THE 6 BUS SYSTEM RELAY SETTINGS
1 4.5890 9 6.0720
1 4.5890 14 5.4570 Values MPSO [30] SV-MPSO
2 0.8680 8 2.3510 TDS1 1.1794 0.5
2 0.8680 14 5.4570 TDS2 0.5 0.5
3 1.3650 2 4.8030 TDS3 0.5562 0.5
4 0.5528 3 30.5470 TDS4 0.5 0.5
5 0.9770 13 17.8210 TDS5 0.5 0.5
6 0.8610 12 17.7050 TDS6 0.5 0.5
7 1.4830 8 2.3510 TDS7 0.5 0.5
7 1.4830 9 6.0720 TDS8 0.5 0.5
8 0.7670 6 18.3380 TDS9 0.5002 0.5
9 0.6390 10 4.0770 TDS10 0.5 0.5
10 0.9455 11 30.9390 TDS11 0.5 0.5
11 1.0740 5 2.8380 TDS12 0.5 0.5
11 1.0740 7 4.4960 TDS13 0.5 0.5
12 3.4220 4 5.1860 TDS14 0.5 0.5
12 3.4220 7 4.4960 solution 22.1959 20.5211
13 0.6010 1 18.1720
14 1.7640 4 5.1860
14 1.7640 5 2.8380

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RESEARCH PAPER
International Journal of Recent Trends in Engineering, Vol 1, No. 3, May 2009
VI CONCLUSION
This paper has presented a new algorithm “SV-MPSO
with Cut down approach” of Constraints Handling in
order to achieve global optimal solution for DOCR
coordination problem at fast convergence rate. The
problem of DOCR coordination is solved here as Linear
Programming problem with the objective of attaining
minimum overall response time of Protective Relays
under consideration of backup. The paper demonstrates
the effectiveness of the proposed SV-MPSO algorithm
wherein the Constraints are handled by introducing the
Cut down approach. The proposed algorithm is tested and
verified for a 6 Bus System and is found to be better both
in terms of the convergence speed and global optimal
solution when compared with its predecessor reported.
The proposed method gives very fast convergence rate
with the assigned parameters values implying improved
global optimal solution with less computational time
involved ensuring reliability of critical apparatus
employed in the power system. As a scope of further
work the far end relay may also be included in the
objective function and a new sympathy tripping
constraints may be added to the problem formulation of
DOCR coordination for optimal solution.
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BIOGRAPHIES
D. Vijayakumar was born in Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu, India on July
10, 1981. He received his Bachelor Degree in
Electrical and Electronics Engineering in 2002
and Master Degree in Power Systems in 2005.
He is currently pursuing PhD Degree at
MANIT in Electrical Engineering
Department, Bhopal, India. His research
interests are in the area of Computer
Applications to Power Systems, Power
System Protection, Evolutionary
Computations and FACTS Devices.
R.K. Nema has received his PhD degree in
Electrical Engineering from Barkatullah
University, Bhopal, India in 2004. He is
currently Aisstant Professor at the
Department of Electrical Engineering,
MANIT, Bhopal, India. His current research
interest include power conditioning unit for
Renewable Energy Storage System
particularly Solar Energy, Hybrid Energy
Systems, Grid Interconnection of Renewable
Energy sources and FACTS Devices.