IEEE MELECON 2006, May 16-19, Benalmádena (Málaga), Spain
Performance of an Over/Under Voltage Relay at
Non-sinusoidal Conditions
Ömer Özgür GENCER, Semra ÖZTÜRK, Korhan KARAARSLAN
Kocaeli University, Faculty of Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering, Veziro÷lu Yerleskesi,
Eski Gölcük Yolu, Kocaeli, Turkey
Abstract—The effects of non-sinusoidal voltages on the
performance of an over/under voltage relay were
experimentally studied. The frequency and amplitude of
individual harmonics were adjusted with a programmable
power source and the operating times of the relay are
examined. The relation between the harmonic voltages and
relay behavior is determined. The measurements show that the
relay may operate slower or faster than expected when
distorted voltages have third harmonic component.
I. INTRODUCTION
Protective relays have a critical role in the electrical
power systems. When an abnormal condition (faults,
overload, loss of system synchronism and etc) occurs,
protective relays take an action.
Microprocessor based relays have some advances in
protection when compared to old-electro-mechanical relays,
such as: lower installation and maintenance costs, better
reliability, improved protection and control, and faster
restoration of outages.
Microprocessor-based relays provide technical advances
and cost savings in several ways [1]:
• To reduce and simplify wirings of the relay
uses.
• To protect breaker for faults,
• To measure voltage and/or current, so reducing
the need of measurements.
In the last two decades, there has been an increase of
non-linear devices in electrical systems. These devices
distort current and voltage waveforms. Due to increase of
these distortions, the reliability of protection devices may be
sacrificed. This situation has led to a great interest in
determining network voltages at harmonic frequencies.
The microprocessor relay accepts sampled voltage and
current and stores it for use in protection and metering
1-4244-0088-0/06/$20.00 ©2006 IEEE
algorithms. Most relays available today have sampling rates
of 32 samples / cycle or higher. The way that the sampled
data produces an input waveform for protection and metering
algorithms varies with manufactures. Some relays filter out
all harmonic frequencies except fundamental, some produce
a true rms value, and some do both. The choice of
measurement principle may be different according to the
manufacturer.
Protective relays are designed to operate at rated
fundamental frequency (50-60 Hz) and pure sine wave. Most
microprocessor relays use different types of digital filter to
find the fundamental component of the voltage/current
signals. Protected relays connected to power experience
voltage and current distortions. This paper deals with
harmonic voltages.
The relay can make incorrect operations like failure or
false to tripping. The reasons of incorrect operation may be
personnel error, incorrect settings, equipment malfunction,
poor application or undesired system conditions.
In the literature, effects of harmonic currents on over
current protection relay are widely studied. In [2] a method
to quantify the effect of disturbances on a protection relay
was investigated. Both solid state and digital over current
relays were tested under various measured disturbances.
An article by Wan & Bollen stated the possible effects of
inter harmonic, 182 Hz on protection relays [3].
Ref [4] answers the question “Should relay react to, or
filter out harmonic distortions”. The tripping times of
electromechanical and microprocessor based relays are
discussed when the relays are subjected to various levels of
harmonic currents.
Over/under voltage relays provide protection to
equipment where either an over or under voltage condition is
potentially damaging. When used as an under voltage relay,
they provide protection to equipment that is required to
operate above a minimum voltage. When used as an over
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voltage relay, they protect equipment against excessive engineer must determine the settings according to the system
voltage conditions. An over/under voltage relay is designed immunity to voltage deviations.
to operate when the operating voltage reaches a preset value
The relationship between time and over/under voltagefor
and drop-out when the operating voltage drops to a level
below the preset value. inverse time characteristic can be expressed in Eq. (1) and
(2), respectively [5]:
This paper summarizes the results of a comprehensive
study of the behavior of protection equipment, over/under k⋅a
t= +c (1)
voltage relay, under non-sinusoidal voltages. To fully [b.(U U s − 1) − 0.5]p
appreciate the harmonic problem, first pure sine waveform is
examined and then compared with harmonic rich waveforms.
k⋅a
The goal of this paper is to maximize the availability of t= +c (2)
protection by showing the risk of relay mis-operation under [b.(1 − U U s ) − 0.5]p
distorted voltages.
To obtain how microprocessor based over/under voltage where,
relay responds to distorted voltages, the harmonic t : operating time (sec)
components are added to fundamental by an AC k : time multiplier
programmable power source respectively. The relay tripping U/Us : multiplies of relay tap setting
times are recorded for different time characteristic operations a, b, c : manufacturer defined constants
of the protection relay. The test results draw a conclusion as p : inversity constant
to the level of voltage distortion.

II. OVER/UNDER VOLTAGE RELAY

The over/under relay is a secondary relay which is
connected to the system via voltage transformers. The relay
operation is based on phase-to-phase voltage of the system.
When the measured voltage exceeds or goes below the set
values of the relay, it trips the circuit breaker and/or provides
a signal for annunciator equipment. The operation of the
combined over/under relay is shown in Figure 1.

(a)

Figure 1. Operation scheme of the over/under relay (b)

Protective devices should operate as fast as possible to
limit the effects of faults to upstream customers and
customers on adjacent feeders fed from the same bus.
Over/under relays may have both definite time characteristic
and inverse time characteristics depending on manufacturer.
Instantaneous or fast definite time operations will have fewer
effects than inverse operating time characteristic. When
definite time characteristic is used, the relay operation time is
constant. At inverse time characteristic, the operation time
depends on the deviation from the setting value. A relay
Figure 2. Inverse time characteristics of the relay at (a)over voltage
(b)under voltage stage
The inverse time curves at over/under voltage stages are
shown in Fig. 2. The relay operates when the measured
voltage is exceeds or falls below set value.
III. RELAY TESTS
The microprocessor based over/under voltage relay was
tested with modern relay voltage injection test instruments as

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shown in Fig. 3. Various levels of harmonic voltages applied the distorted voltage has 5% 3rd harmonic component, the
to the relay were created by a Programmable AC Power protected system will be subjected to 1.0114 of its threshold
Source, which is an 4.5 kVA fully programmable three- and 1.062 and of its nominal voltage. (NO: No Operation)
phase source with an integrated arbitrary waveform
generator. The programmable ac power source enables a
TABLE I. OPERATION TIMES FOR DIFERENT VOLTAGE DISTORTIONS
flexible, variable amplitude and frequency voltage output.
The output voltage waveforms can be complied from an Over Voltage Under Voltage
equation expression. This is useful for specifying exact THD (%) THD (%)
U/US U/US
harmonic components in sine waves as well as specifying 5 10 5 10
1 NO NO 1 5 5
exact amplitudes and phase angles for transient and steady 1.0114 NO NO 1.0167 5 5
state conditions [6]. 1.0200 5,598 NO 1.0334 5 5
To define the effects of voltage harmonic orders on 1.0296 5,279 NO 1.0500 5 5
1.0419 5,066 NO 1.0584 NO 5
different time characteristics of the relay, the tripping times 1.0476 5,056 NO 1.0750 NO 5
were recorded as the relay was subjected to the distorted 1.0571 5,056 5,127 1.0917 NO 5
voltages for both over/under voltage stages by a Relay 1.0648 5,056 5,065 1.1052 NO NO
Testing Unit. The relay parameters were set to 1.05 pu for 1.1000 5,056 5,035 1.1133 NO NO
over voltage and 0.6 pu for under voltage limits (U/Us). Total
Harmonic Distortion (THD) levels are selected as 5% and When the voltage distortion is increased, tripping times
10% of the fundamental voltage while keeping the RMS of the relay also increases. In most power systems, the 3rd
value of the voltage constant. The phase angles of harmonics harmonic component never reaches a 10% of fundamental,
are ignored (00) for all test voltages. except a resonance condition.
The relay trips faster than expected for the under voltages
have 3rd harmonic component. For example, it trips the
breaker if the voltage decreases 65% of its nominal voltage,
while its set value is 60% of nominal voltage for the
protected system.

B. Inverse Time Characteristic

Figure 3. Circuit diagram of the relay test system
A. Definite Time Characteristic
The test results of definite time characteristics are shown
in Fig 4. The trip time of the relay is set to 5 sec. The
voltages that are applied by the Relay Testing Unit are 1.06
pu & 0.63 pu for over and under voltages respectively.
The tests show that either over voltage or under voltage
stages at the presence at third harmonic, the relay operation
fails. It leads to failure to trip at over voltage and
malfunction trip at under voltage.
To show the third harmonic voltage on operation times of
the relay, only the third harmonic is added to fundamental
voltage, the operations times in Table 1 are measured. When
To define the influences of voltage harmonic distortions
on inverse time characteristic of over/under relay, 130% and
50% of nominal voltages were applied to the relay by Relay
Testing Unit. The time multiplier (k) is taken 0.4 for both
over and under voltage stages.
While the applied voltage is pure sine wave, the tripping
time of the relay can be easily found from the characteristic
curves, given in Fig. 2, which is 3 sec for either over voltage
or under voltage.
Fig. 5 shows the recorded tripping times of the inverse
tripping time characterized over/under voltage relay. In
normal operation, except the third harmonic component, the
relay trips at expected operation times. When a third
harmonic component occurs, the measurement circuit of the
relay fails to operate. As seen in definite time characteristic
tests, the relay operates fail to trip at over voltage and mal-
trip at under voltage.
It is also interesting to determine the deviations of the
tripping times for different over voltage values. The time
multiplier (k) is set to 0.4 and multiplies of the relay tap
setting (U/Us) is changed from 1.1 to 1.5. The tripping times
of the relay is obtained for both 5% and 10% of harmonic
distortions. It is shown that inverse time characteristic curve
changes if the voltage is distorted. The relay operates like k
is set to 0.47 for 5% and 0.52 for 10% THD. So the
distortion level of the system must be considered while relay
settings are desired.

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 (a) (a)

(b) (b)
Figure 4. Relay behavior at definite trip time (5sec) characteristic (a) Figure 5. Relay behavior at inverse trip time characteristic (a) over
over voltage (b) under voltage case voltage (b) under voltage case

CONCLUSIONS
An over/under voltage relay was tested using harmonic
components superimposed to the fundamental to completely
analyze the effects of waveform distortions. From the test
results presented, the following conclusions can be drawn:
• The microprocessor based over/under relays
designed to operate with pure, undistorted
fundamental waveforms are affected form voltage
disturbances.
• Third harmonic voltages lead the relay to mal-trip
or fail to trip.
Figure 6. Relay behavior at inverse trip time characteristic (a) over
• The magnitudes of third harmonic affect operating voltage (b) under voltage case
time of the relay.
• Both definite time and inverse time characteristics
are invalid when the measured voltages of the
protected equipment have third harmonic
components.
[3] Wang, F.; Bollen, M.H.J.”Measurement of 182 Hz interharmonics
REFERENCES and their impact on relay operation” Harmonics and Quality of
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Applications Conference”, 1998, Third IAS Annual Meeting. IEEE Volume: 1 , 2000 Page(s): 55 -60 vol.1
Vol. 3. 1998, pp. 2342-2347 [4] Heavey P.; Whitney C. “RMS Measuring Principles in the
[2] Wang, F.; Bollen, M.H.J “Evaluating the effect of measured power Application of Protective Relaying and Metering”, 30th Annual
disturbances on protective relay operation”. Electric Utility Western Protective Relay Conference, Oct. 21, USA
Deregulation and Restructuring and Power Technologies, 2000. [5] ABB SPAU 121C User manual and Technical Description.
Proceedings. DRPT 2000. International Conference on , 2000 [6] California Instruments, Operating Manual: LX Series AC Power
Page(s): 232 -237 Source, 2003.

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