Proteção diferencial de transformadores de potência utilizando a transformada Wavelet com efeitos de borda

Abstract

The differential function is widely used in power transformer protection, leading to a reliable discrimination between internal faults and other events associated with power transformer operation. However, the conventional differential protection function based on the estimation of current phasors presents difficulties in the detection of some internal faults, such as turn-to-turn faults and turn-to-earth faults close to the transformer neutral, and dependence on the harmonic restraint and harmonic blocking functions in maintaining protection scheme security during inrush conditions, overeexcitation, and external faults with current transformer saturation. In order to improve the performance of the traditional methods, a negative sequence differential element with high sensitivity has been used in association with the commom harmonic blocking and harmonic restraint functions. However, internal faults and other disturbances associated to the power transformer protection present transients, which can be properly detected by using the wavelet transform. This paper proposes recreate the traditional phase and negative sequence current differential elements by using the boundary discrete wavelet transform of the currents flowing through the secondary winding of the CTs connected in differential connection. The proposed method was evaluated for the success rate and operating time performance indices for extensive simulations of internal faults, external faults, CT saturations, crosscountry faults and transformer energizations in the absence and presence of fault, and its performance was compared to that of a classical differential protection scheme. The proposed method was very fast, reducing the protection operation time from a few milliseconds to some microseconds, reliable, safe, simple (only two differential functions), immune to noise and presented a low computational burden when implemented in a digital signal processor for real-time application purposes. The results obtained revealed the advantages of use of the wavelet transform in the differential protection in relation to conventional protection, and criteria required in protection systems, such as reliability, safety and speed, have been adequately met.