Mitigation of Arc Flash hazard by using protection solution

Abstract

This paper gives an introduction to the problematic phenomena of arc flashing. For protection engineers important terms and facts in the NFPA 70E standard and the IEEE 1584 standard will be presented. The importance of the fault clearing time will be discussed in detail. Protection schemes which achieve fast fault clearing times for bus faults and feeder faults will be reviewed. In this paper an application will be introduced which is based on the reverse interlocking scheme. Additionally it offers a new solution that achieves a fast fault clearing time for bus faults and close in faults. This is normally the area within a substation, where arc flashing can cause a potential hazard for operators. This application will eliminate the problem of longer fault clearing times for faults close to the bus due to the co-ordination with radial feeders relays. This paper will discuss the necessary settings considerations and will show the limits of this application