Electrical Control & Protection Part 3

Electrical protection is a key element in all electrical systems, and ensures that the electrical network can operate safely and efficiently.

This third course in the protection series focuses on low voltage and distribution protection systems and busbar protection.

Differential protection is one of the most widely used type of protection used around the world and is critical to the safe operation of transformers, busbars and generators.

By the end of this section you will understand all of the key elements of differential protection and appreciate why it used to protect critical equipment.

Protection zones are used on the electrical system to quickly identify the location of the fault, so that a decision can be made on which protection system needs to be operated to clear it. 

This section looks in detail  at how protection zones are formed and used to achieve this purpose.

Fuses are the most basic type of protection device that you will come across  and we see them used widely in domestic and industrial systems.

By this end of this section you will understand all about how this device operates  and gain a basic understanding of how we use logarithmic graphs to select the correct fuse for each application.

Miniature circuit breakers are used widely on modern low voltage systems.

In this section we will look in detail at this popular device and learn all about its characteristics and limitations.

By the end of the section you will understand what a miniature circuit breaker characteristic looks like and how we use logarithmic graphs to co-ordinate between miniature circuit breakers on the same system.

Air circuit breakers are used widely on the low voltage system, to co-ordinate with the fuses and miniature circuit breakers feeding the power into the system. 

By the end of this section you will understand some of the main features of air circuit breakers  and how they are used to provide protection co-ordination with the other equipment's that we use on the low voltage system

Electrical distribution systems are used to directly feed power to industrial consumers and form networks that supply all of the domestic consumers.

One of the main equipments that we use on the distribution network are ring main units.

By the end of this section you will understand how these critical devices operate and what protection and control systems we use to ensure that they are operated safely

Metalclad switchgears are the main type of switchgear that we use in large distribution systems.

By the end of this section  you will know all of the key components of this type of equipment, and what protection circuits & equipment's we use to make sure that they operate safely.

All of the feeders, incomers and transformers on the network are connected together using busbars

These are a critical node on the network  and a failure on a busbar can close down substantial parts of the system  so its important that any fault on them is detected quickly.

By the end of the first of three sections on this subject  you will understand all of the basic principles of the busbar protection systems that we use on the distribution network

As we have seen previously busbar protection is key to the health of the substation and any mal-operation of the protection can have significant consequences for the network.

In this second part of the section on busbar protection  we look at how we create busbar protection zones for the transmission network.

By the end of this section you will know some of the transmission substation configurations that we use, and how we position the current transformers to protect them.

Now that you understand all about the busbar protection zones that we use for transmission substations, in this final section of the course we will look in detail at the busbar protection relays that we use.

By the end of this section  you will understand all about high impedance busbar protection  and how we use it to protect the busbars in a transmission level substation.