J. Inst. Eng. India Ser.

B (February 2017) 98(1):147–154

DOI 10.1007/s40031-016-0237-5

ARTICLE OF PROFESSIONAL INTERESTS

Capacitance and Inductance based Rotor Ground Fault Location

Method for Synchronous Machines
Ramanathan Palanisamy1

Received: 9 February 2014 / Accepted: 4 January 2016 / Published online: 21 June 2016
Ó The Institution of Engineers (India) 2016

Abstract This paper presents a capacitance and induc- increases after the first one since, it establishes a reference
tance based rotor ground fault location method for syn- for voltages induced in the field by stator transients,
chronous machines, which can detect and locate the ground thereby increasing the stress to ground at other points on
fault in the rotor. The main contribution of this technique is the field winding. If this second fault occurs, the field
to find the location of the ground fault in the rotor winding winding will be partially short circuited, producing
and reduce the repair time. This detection method is based unbalanced fluxes in the machine, with the consequent
on the measurement of inductance and capacitance of the vibrations and unbalance in the stator voltage. A double
rotor winding. It is suitable for salient pole synchronous rotor ground fault could produce severe damage to the
machines. This method has been validated through exper- generator. Thus, the detection of a ground fault at the initial
imental tests at the site. is more important.
Most rotor ground fault detection devices for syn-
Keywords Rotor  Synchronous machine  chronous generators are based on detecting abnormal val-
Fault location  Power system protection ues in certain electrical variables such as the stator no-load
voltage [2] or the air gap flux [3] which can only detect
double faults. However, a single ground fault cannot be
Introduction detected with these techniques, because it does not produce
any abnormality in the generator.
The use of protective devices in power systems is abso- To achieve the early detection of the initial failure of the
lutely necessary in order to safeguard them against short rotor to ground before severe damage occurs in the generator,
circuits, overloads and in general, abnormal operations or a detection technique for synchronous generators with static
faults. The protection system in generating units is espe- excitation systems has been presented in [4]. In the event of
cially important since it must reliably guarantee the power higher excitation voltages, such as the ceiling voltage, the
supply as per IEEE Standard C37.102 [1]. error in the rotor fault position estimate increases up to 13 %
Some of the most common abnormalities such as [5]. A significant improvement over the detection technique
vibrations and unbalanced stator voltages in synchronous with fuzzy rule based rotor ground fault location method has
generators are caused by ground faults in the rotor. been presented in [6]. This paper aims to make a contribution
Generally, the first ground fault does not cause any to the field of fault location in synchronous machines, where
damage to the machine, because the rotor winding circuit is there are already developments in ground fault location for the
ungrounded. However, the probability of a second fault stator winding [7, 8], in fault location between the core lam-
inations [9, 10] and even in insulation fault location using
partial discharges [11, 12].
& Ramanathan Palanisamy This paper presents a rotor ground fault location method
[email protected]
that can be used in the salient pole synchronous machine
1
230 KV Sub-Station, Tamil Nadu Electricity Board, without static excitation systems. This novel technique has
Kolappalur, Tamil Nadu, India two important advantages.

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(1) It could locate a ground fault on the dc side by AC-Voltage Injection Ground-Fault Detection
capacitance based method of the rotor winding and
the same could be ensured by inductance based This detection system is based on a wheatstone bridge
method and vice versa. consisting of an ac voltage source ground connected in
(2) It is simple and does not need any additional injection series with two capacitors (Fig. 2). Each capacitor is con-
source because it can measure the required physical nected to the positive and negative terminals of the field
parameters of the rotor winding by a single winding. An over current relay measures the ac source
instrument. current. During normal operation, a small current flows
from the ac source (zero in theory). In the event of a ground
As stated above, this paper presents a capacitance and
fault, the current will increase and the relay will trip.
inductance based rotor ground fault location method for
salient pole synchronous machines. It is based on the
Voltage Divider Ground-Fault Detection
variation of capacitance and inductance parameter of the
rotor winding due to ground faults at different location of
A voltage divider with a midpoint between the positive and
winding. This fact is of particular interest in the case of
negative terminals of the field winding and a sensitive
hydro generators because of the feasibility of removing one
overvoltage relay between the divider midpoint and ground
pole without requiring a complete rotor extraction. More-
should be installed. During normal operation, the voltage
over, the repair and maintenance operations of generators
between the voltage divider midpoint and ground is zero,
can be largely improved.
however, if a ground fault is present in the field winding,
this voltage is not zero (Fig. 3).
If the fault is located at the end of the winding, the
State of the Art
voltage measured by the relay will be at its maximum.
However, in case of faults located at the midpoint of the
There are several methods for the detection of rotor field
field winding, the voltage across the relay would be zero.
ground faults in synchronous generators [13, 14]. These
So, this scheme is not sensitive to faults closer to the
detection methods generally require a ground connection
midpoint of the field winding.
and the use of an external ac or dc voltage source, or a low-
frequency signal-injector source. This section presents the
most usual techniques [15].
Principles of the Rotor Ground Fault Location
Method
DC-Voltage Injection Ground-Fault Detection
The procedure proposed in this paper utilizes both capac-
This technique consists of a dc voltage source in series with
itance and inductance components to locate the rotor
an overvoltage relay coil, both connected between an
ground fault with 100 % accuracy. A rotor winding circuit
excitation brush (usually the negative side of the field
is the combination of all the three circuit parameters,
winding) and ground. In the event of a ground fault, a
current will flow through the relay causing it to actuate
(Fig. 1).

Fig. 1 DC-voltage injection ground-fault detection Fig. 2 AC-voltage injection ground-fault detection

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J. Inst. Eng. India Ser. B (February 2017) 98(1):147–154 149

winding ends and the ground are measured. The location of

ground fault could be easily detected from these values.
Figure 5 shows the rotor winding before ground fault. If
the measurement value from A to the ground is equal to the
value from B to the ground, then there is no evidence of
ground fault, that is,
CAG ¼ CBG ð1Þ
If solid ground fault occurs at any point between A and B
as in Fig. 6, the measured capacitance values are not equal,
that is, CA-G = CB-G. The difference in the capacitance
Fig. 3 Voltage divider ground-fault detection value depends on the location of ground fault. Here, two
sets of series pole capacitance circuits are formed due to
namely, resistance, inductance and capacitance as shown in
the ground fault, from A to G and from B to G.
Fig. 4. Any abnormality in the geometry of the rotor
Therefore, the fault location FL can be estimated
winding will reflect on these parameters. In specific, it is
according to the following expressions:
observed that the salient pole rotor windings are very rich
in inter-turn capacitance in the order of hundreds of micro- CP
FL ¼ ð2Þ
farads which is quite useful in locating the faults with a CAG
 
higher degree of accuracy. CP
ðORÞ FL ¼ ðNP Þ  ð3Þ
CBG
Relationship Between Capacitance and Fault
Location where, NP represents the total no. of poles and CP repre-
sents the individual pole capacitance.
The principle behind this rotor ground fault location The fault location FL can be estimated using either
method is the relationship between the capacitive compo- Eqs. (2) or (3), both of which will yield the same result.
nent in the salient pole rotor winding and the location of
the fault along the winding. Relationship Between Inductance and Fault
The proposed ground fault detection method requires a Location
simple meter for the measurement of capacitance of the
rotor winding. The capacitance values between the rotor The relationship between inductive component in the
salient pole rotor winding and the fault location is similar
to that of the relationship between the capacitive compo-
Fig. 4 Synchronous machine B nent and the fault location. The inductance values between
rotor equivalent circuit
the rotor winding ends and the ground are measured from
44
A to ground and from B to the ground.
Before ground fault, the inductance between rotor
winding to ground is nil, because there is no electric circuit
in between them. After ground fault, two electrical circuits
43
are formed in the rotor winding, from A to G and B to G
(Fig. 6). The inductance values are now arrived between
rotor winding and ground. The location of ground fault
could be easily detected from these values.
POLES

1
L

A
Fig. 5 Rotor field winding before ground fault

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150 J. Inst. Eng. India Ser. B (February 2017) 98(1):147–154

Table 2 Capacitance values between rotor winding end and ground

after fault
Test points C, lf Test points C, lf

A–G 49.2 B–G 14.4

Table 3 Inductance values between rotor winding end and ground

after fault
Test points L, mH Test points L, mH
Fig. 6 Rotor field winding after ground fault
A–G 33.23 B–G 116.0
The difference in the inductance values depends on the
location of the ground fault. Therefore, the fault location The tests have been conducted on the rotor winding of a
FL can be estimated according to the following 50 MW, 44-pole synchronous machine (Table 5). In case,
expressions: once the ground fault is detected, locating the fault can be a
LAG long and laborious process, especially with multi pole
FL ¼ ð4Þ
LP synchronous generators. In these cases, in order to deter-
  mine the fault, the machine has to be removed from ser-
LBG
ðORÞ FL ¼ ðNP Þ  ð5Þ vice. The connections between the rotor winding and the
LP
excitation system may have to be disconnected in order to
where, LP represents the individual pole inductance. locate the ground fault.
All Eqs. (2), (3), (4) and (5) yield the same result to find
the location of the rotor ground fault. Estimation of the Individual Pole Capacitance
and Inductance

Observations and Calculations The individual pole capacitance and the inductance values
are estimated before commissioning of synchronous gen-
The tests were conducted on rotor winding of a salient pole erator. These data are used to estimate the fault location
synchronous machine to test the validity of the proposed after the ground fault. In order to estimate the individual
rotor ground fault location method. The test results are pole capacitance (CP) and inductance (LP), the cumulative
presented in Tables 1, 2, 3 and 4. capacitance and inductance values from rotor winding end

Table 1 Capacitance and inductance measured on the rotor winding before ground fault
Test points C, lF L, mH Test points C, lF L, mH Test points C, lF L, mH

A—1a 688.2 2.442 A—16a 31.01 54.04 A—31a 16.07 104.3

A—2a 274.7 6.112 A—17a 29.25 57.28 A—32a 15.49 108.2
A—3a 177.9 9.435 A—18a 27.70 60.49 A—33a 14.95 112.1
A—4a 130.1 12.89 A—19a 26.30 63.71 A—34a 14.47 115.8
A—5a 102.8 16.29 A—20a 25.03 66.93 A—35a 14.03 119.5
A—6a 85.24 19.68 A—21a 23.87 70.20 A—36a 13.60 123.3
A—7a 72.53 23.09 A—22a 22.83 73.41 A—37a 13.20 127.0
A—8a 63.29 26.48 A—23a 21.85 76.67 A—38a 12.82 130.8
A—9a 55.95 29.96 A—24a 20.97 79.88 A—39a 12.47 134.4
A—10a 50.15 33.41 A—25a 20.13 83.24 A—40a 12.15 138.0
A—11a 45.47 36.84 A—26a 19.35 86.67 A—41a 11.85 141.5
A—12a 41.49 40.39 A—27a 18.61 90.09 A—42a 11.56 144.9
A—13a 38.13 43.94 A—28a 17.93 93.50 A—43a 11.32 148.2
A—14a 35.37 47.38 A—29a 17.28 97.05 A—B 11.20 151.6
A—15a 33.00 50.76 A—30a 16.65 100.6

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J. Inst. Eng. India Ser. B (February 2017) 98(1):147–154 151

Table 4 Capacitance and inductance values between rotor poles and ground after fault
Test points C, lf L, mH Test points C, lf L, mH Test points C, lf L, mH

A–G 49.20 33.23 15a—G 101.9 16.46 30a—G 25.17 65.17

1a—G 55.90 29.97 16a—G 84.76 19.80 31a—G 24.36 68.77
2a—G 63.05 26.58 17a—G 72.75 23.03 32a—G 23.14 72.41
3a—G 72.22 23.20 18a—G 63.91 26.22 33a—G 21.95 76.32
4a—G 85.00 19.74 19a—G 57.13 29.33 34a—G 20.89 80.20
5a—G 102.9 16.29 20a—G 51.60 32.47 35a—G 19.97 83.95
6a—G 130.2 12.88 21a—G 47.08 35.6 36a—G 19.12 87.71
7a—G 177.5 9.45 22a—G 43.21 38.78 37a—G 18.33 91.49
8a—G 274.5 6.11 23a—G 39.21 41.9 38a—G 17.60 95.31
9a—G 679.1 2.47 24a—G 37.16 45.07 39a—G 16.93 99.05
10a—G 0 0 25a—G 34.17 48.26 40a—G 16.31 102.8
11a—G 685.6 2.45 26a—G 32.50 51.55 41a—G 15.75 106.4
12a—G 274.3 6.11 27a—G 30.52 54.92 42a—G 15.25 109.9
13a—G 175.5 9.56 28a—G 28.76 58.27 43a—G 14.78 113.4
14a—G 128.3 13.07 29a—G 27.17 61.65 B–G 14.40 116.0

Table 5 Name plate details of synchronous machine used in the Generally

experiment
1=CT ¼ ð1=C1 Þ þ ð1=C2 Þ þ ð1=C3 Þ þ    þ ð1=C44 Þ
‘‘Electrosila’’
1=CT ¼ ð1=CP Þ  NP
Named after S. M. Kiroy 1=CP ¼ ð1=CT Þ=NP
Three phase water wheel alternator
Individual pole capacitance CP ¼ 1=fð1=CT Þ=NP g ð6Þ
Rated KVA 56,000
Substitute the values in the above equation
Rated voltage 11,000 V
Frequency 50 Cycles Cp ¼ 1=0:002029 ¼ 492:8 lf
Stator current 2940 A The individual pole capacitance is 492 lf.
Rotor current 1000 A
Individual pole inductance LP ¼ LT =NP ð7Þ
Power factor 0.9
Connection Star LP ¼ 151:6=44 ¼ 3:44 mH
Rated speed 136.4 R.P.M
The individual pole inductance is 3.44 mH.
Runway speed 330 R.P.M
Type CB 845/140—44-T
Estimation of the Rotor Fault Location based
Sl No 361665 on Capacitance
Cooling air temperature 45 °C
State Standard 5616-50 Lenincrad 1963, Made in USSR In order to estimate the fault location, the capacitance
values are measured between the end of the windings and
ground. For example, a ground fault is created at a point
10a in-between pole 10 and 11 as shown in Fig. 8. The
A to B (Fig. 7) are measured. In these cases, each pole
measured capacitance values between A and G and B and
capacitance and inductance values are added constantly to
G were not equal.
obtain the total rotor winding series capacitance (CT) and
The values indicate the location of a ground fault, how
inductance (LT) value (Table 1).
far it is close or away from the end of winding (Table 2).
The individual pole capacitance and inductance values
However, the rotor winding end A to ground capacitance
are calculated from Table 1.
value is 49.2 lf which is higher than 14.4 lf (B–G). The
Total capacitance CT = 11.2 lf
higher value of the capacitance indicates that the location
Total inductance LT = 151.6 mH
of ground is closer to winding end A.
Total number of poles NP = 44
Simple calculation to estimate the fault location

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152 J. Inst. Eng. India Ser. B (February 2017) 98(1):147–154

Fig. 7 Rotor winding total ROTOR POLES

capacitance and inductance
measurement layout 1 9 10 11 12 43 44
A 1a 9a 10a 11a 12a 43a B

CT or LT

Fig. 8 Rotor fault location with ROTOR POLES

capacitance measurement layout
1 9 10 11 12 43 44
A 1a 9a 10a 11a 12a 43a B

C A-G C B-G
G

Substitute values in the Eq. (2) Simple calculation to estimate the fault location
FL ¼ 492=49:2 ¼ 10 Substitute values in the Eq. (4)
FL ¼ 33:23=3:44  10
(OR) Substitute values in the Eq. (3)
FL ¼ 44  ð492=14:4Þ  10 (OR) Substitute values in the Eq. (5)
FL ¼ 44  ð116=3:44Þ  10
Location of ground fault in the rotor winding is 10th pole.
Location of ground fault in the rotor winding is 10th pole.
Estimation of the Rotor Fault Location based Normally, the individual pole capacitance and inductance
on Inductance values are measured and calculated before the ground fault
and the data is held for future reference. If there is no pre-
In order to estimate the fault location, the inductance values vious data available in the faulted machine, the following
are measured between the end of the windings and ground. A method is used to detect the fault location easily. It is useful
ground fault is created at a point 10a in-between pole 10 and to detect the fault location without any calculated data.
11 as shown in Fig. 9. Here, two sets of electrical circuits are To test the validity of the proposed rotor ground fault
formed with respect to the ground. Now, the inductance location method and to detect the fault location without any
values between A and G and B and G have been arrived. calculated data, measurement of capacitance and induc-
The values also indicate the location of ground fault tance values between each pole and ground is conducted.
from the end of winding (Table 3). However, the rotor For example, the ground fault is created at a point 10a in-
winding end A to ground inductance value is 33.23 mH between pole 10 and 11 and the values are measured and
which is lower than 116.0 mH (B–G). The lower value of tabulated (Table 4).
inductance indicates that the location of the ground fault is The values plotted in the graph (Figs. 10, 11) indicate
closer to winding end A. the fault location by the fall at the 10th pole, since the test

Fig. 9 Rotor fault location with ROTOR POLES

inductance measurement layout
1 9 10 11 12 43 44
A 1a 9a 10a 11a 12a 43a B

LA-G LB-G

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J. Inst. Eng. India Ser. B (February 2017) 98(1):147–154 153

800 method is accurate enough to detect and locate rotor

700 ground faults. The applicability of the proposed method has
Capacitance,µF 600 also been verified by means of experimental tests with an
500 actual synchronous machine.
This method is very simple, time saving and economi-
400
cal. This method requires a simple instrument and they
300
need no electrical circuits. The main advantage of this
200
method is that it contributes accurate information on the
100 fault location after tripping the machine.
0 Having information on the location of a ground fault in
0 20 40 60 the rotor winding saves time in the generator repair pro-
No of poles
cess. Moreover, in hydro generators, it might be feasible to
Fig. 10 Capacitance waveform for a fault at 10th pole remove one pole without resorting to a complete rotor
extraction. This method can be used to design relay to
140 detect the location of the rotor ground fault.
120 Acknowledgments The authors acknowledge the support and
Inductance, mH

100 encouragement extended to Tamil Nadu Electricity Board, Kolap-

palur, Tamil Nadu, India.
80
60
40 References
20
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