A Novel Wavelet Based Method for Improvement of Power Transformer Differential Relay against Magnetizing Inrush Current and CT Saturation

Differential protective relay serves as the main protection of transformers against faults in the windings for many years. Unremitting tries for more smart of this protection relay have been done by different creative manufactures and up to now different methods and inventions have been proposed for better operational of the differential relay. However, a differential protection for differential currents would be handicapped by difficulties due to several natural phenomena which are the cause of false differential currents and misoperate of the relay. Some of these phenomena, such as the inrush current and saturation of instrument current transformers, are the main concern in designing an efficient differential protection algorithm. This paper at first, proposes a new algorithm based on the Wavelet Transform (WT) to identify internal fault from magnetizing inrush in three phase power transformers. The internal faults can be accurately discriminated from inrush current less than a quarter a cycle after the disturbance. At following with definition of an index which it is extracted from the high frequencies by WT, the restrain current in bias-current characteristic of differential relay has been improved. Obtained results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can provide the desired response and can be used as a very fast and accurate method.