Abstract
Undesirable operation of zone 3 impedance relay (mho relays) is a possible factor for causing cascading failure as seen in several previous large scale blackouts, where power flow redistribution and power swing caused by outage or switching operations satisfy the condition for the relay operation. So far, the condition itself has not fully been investigated, and therefore, there has been little attempt to avoid the relay operation by means of direct power flow control. This paper analyzes the condition for zone 3 relay operation from the viewpoint of its sensitivity to power flow. An operating margin for security is defined for each relay to carry out effective monitoring. It is newly pointed out that undesirable operation can be effectively avoided by reactive power controls as well as real power controls. The method to compute the operation margin is also given through the analysis of the optimal Var location to control the operation margin. Effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated using the IEEE test systems.
