White Paper

A Guide for Calculating Step

Distance Relay Settings
Joe Perez, P.E.

On June 7, 2018, FERC approved the NERC Reliability Standard PRC-027-1: Coordination of Protection
System Performance During Faults. This standard mandates that generator, transmission, and distribution
owners establish a process for developing new and revised protection settings and properly coordinate
their systems with interconnected utilities as part of Requirement 1. This requirement must be completed
by October 1, 2020.

The relay setting development process should include a series of steps that guides the settings engineer to
achieve reliable and properly coordinated relay settings. First, each utility must develop a solid protection
philosophy that establishes the guidelines for setting the functionality of protective relays. When
developing a protection philosophy, clear indication should be given for special cases where the normal
procedures are not most suitable for certain applications. Next, a set of calculation sheet templates
embedded in a spreadsheet or automation program should be implemented in order to maintain
consistency and uniformity throughout the company. In this way, multiple engineers or consulting parties
can follow the same standard procedures, preventing an inconsistent set of settings and formats from
being created.

This white paper provides a basic structure for calculating Step Distance Relay settings which utilities can
follow to implement their own protection philosophy and achieve compliance. It also provides the reader
information on software solutions for building and storing an entire protection philosophy to maintain
uniformity and consistency.

In an increasingly automated industry, it is important to preserve the knowledge behind the automation,
empowering engineers to enhance their relay setting experience by understanding the work going on
“behind the scenes.” SynchroGrid is committed to providing helpful resources to the power engineering
community to help ensure that this critical information is not lost.

Step Distance Relaying

Step Distance Relaying is a setting philosophy that utilizes zones of protection and tripping time intervals
to determine when a relay operates. This protection scheme is used for both phase and ground faults, but
it uses separate relays for each. Distance relaying is directional and typically utilizes four zones of

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protection, each of which reaches a fixed distance and operates in a set amount of time. Below is a step-
by-step guide which outlines how to set the reaches and timers for each of the zones correctly.

Zone 1 Relay
A. Reach
1. For a two-terminal line, set the relay to reach up to but no more than 85% of the total line
impedance. For ground elements, take any parallel line elements out of service and check to
see if the relay is overreaching. Set the relay so that the apparent impedance does not
overreach 85%.
2. For a three-terminal line, set the relay to reach up to but no more than 85% of the total line
impedance to the nearest terminal, without infeed. For ground elements, take any parallel line
elements out of service and check to see if the relay is overreaching. Set the relay so that the
apparent impedance does not overreach 85% of the nearest terminal.
B. Time
1. The zone 1 relay will trip instantaneously.

Zone 2 Relay
A. Reach
1. For two-terminal lines, set the relay to reach at least 125% of the protected line with
infeed.
a. Check to see if this setting overreaches by more than 80% of the Zone 1 relay
reach on the other lines away from the remote terminal of the protected line with
the maximum infeed off.
b. If the setting does overreach, set the Zone 2 timer 0.3 seconds above the Zone 2
timer at the remote terminal.
2. For three-terminal lines, set the relay to reach at least 125% of the protected line with
infeed.
a. Check to see if this setting overreaches more than 80% of the Zone 1 relay reach
on the other lines away from the remote terminals of the protected line with
either the protected line infeed or the largest bus infeed off.
b. If the setting does overreach, set the Zone 2 timer to 0.3 seconds above the Zone
2 timer at the remote terminal.
B. Time
1. Set the Zone 2 timer as follows:
a. If the equipment fed from the remote terminal(s) is protected by instantaneous
relays, set the Zone 2 timer to 24 cycles (0.4 seconds).
b. Coordinate 24 cycles (0.4 seconds) behind any type of time delay relay used to
protect any piece of equipment at the remote terminal(s) of the protected line for
faults which can also be seen by the Zone 2 relay.

Zone 3 Forward Relay

A. Reach
If in the following settings, the relay overreaches the Zone 2 of any of the remote lines, then the relay
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 must be time coordinated 18 cycles (0.3 seconds) behind the remote Zone 3 relay time.

1. For two-terminal lines where the remote station is a ring bus or breaker-and-one-half
scheme with breaker failure protection, set the relay to reach 110% of the sum of the
protected line impedance and the impedance of the longest adjacent line.
a. Do not take infeed into account.
b. Check that the relay does not overreach Zone 2 of any of the remote lines with
the maximum infeed off.

2. For two-terminal lines where the remote station is a ring bus or breaker-and-one-half
scheme including breaker failure protection, set the relay to reach 110% of the sum of the
protected line impedance and the remote line impedance, with infeed, if any.
a. Check that the relay does not overreach Zone 2 of the remote line when there is
no infeed.

3. For three-terminal lines where the remote station is a ring bus or a breaker-and-one-half
scheme with breaker-failure protection, set the relay to reach 110% of the sum of the
protected line impedance with infeed and the longest adjacent line impedance without the
effect of the bus infeed or the third terminal infeed of the adjacent line if the line is three-
terminal.
a. Check that the relay does not overreach Zone 2 of any of the remote lines when
either the three-terminal infeed or the maximum bus infeed is off.

4. For three-terminal lines where the remote station has no breaker-failure protection, set the
relay to reach 110% of the sum of the protected line impedance with infeed and the
remote line impedance with the effect of the bus infeed, if any, but without the effect of
the remote line infeed, if any.
a. Check that the relay does not overreach Zone 2 of the remote line when either the
three-terminal infeed or the bus infeed, if any, is off.

5. For two-terminal or three-terminal lines where the remote station has a single-circuit
breaker with breaker failure protection, set the relay to reach 125% of the Zone 2 relay
reach.
a. Check that the relay does not overreach Zone 2 of the remote station without any
infeed.
B. Time
1. Set the Zone 3 timer to 60 cycles (1 second).

Calculating & Storing Relay Setting Philosophy

Utilities can use a Word document or spreadsheets to document the step-by-step calculations of this
philosophy, or they can now use a software application to store the protection philosophy, allowing them
to consistently apply line relay settings across the utility. SynchroGrid has developed an efficient way to

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1101 University Drive East, Suite A-108 3
College Station, TX 77840
(713) 471-3429 | [email protected] www.synchrogrid.com
store relay setting philosophies in our software tool, SARA (Setting Automation Relay Assistant), which
is demostrated by the figures below. In the screenshots, we show an example of equations we have
constructed for a relay setting philosophy that have been saved in our user-friendly, customizable
template. This template can be applied to any line in a system and integrates with ASPEN to calculate all
fault values for each line.

Figure 1: SynchroGrid Relay Setting Philosophy

Figure 2: SynchroGrid Relay Setting Philosophy

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 Figure 3: SynchroGrid Relay Setting Philosophy

SARA provides a centralized solution for utilities to store their protection philosophy, apply consistent
settings, and, above all, calculate settings with no copy and paste error. While the application provides a
powerful way to calculate relay settings, the review and overall quality of settings still relies on the
protection engineer’s experience for making necessary changes based on their knowledge of the
application. Therefore, it is imperative that the engineer stays informed on the processes being performed
by the software in order to use their industry knowledge to improve system operations.

References

[1] Relay Setting Philosophy. Texas Municipal Power Agency, Anderson, TX, USA, n.d., pp. 3-1-3-2.

[2] The Art of Protective Relaying. General Electric, Philadelphia, PA, USA, 1964, pp. 11-12.

Texas Registered Engineering Firm

1101 University Drive East, Suite A-108 5
College Station, TX 77840
(713) 471-3429 | [email protected] www.synchrogrid.com