Fault Analysis for Protection Purposes in Maritime Applications

The method of symmetrical components simplifies analysis of a three-phase network and provides information regarding the existance of a fault in the system. This concept is applied to a radial power system in the maritime sector. A fault analysis is performed for the main types of faults, applied in different locations of the network. The fault current is measured using the current transformers that are already present in the system as part of a time-inverse overcurrent protection. Simulation results show that the symmetrical components of the currents seen by these current transformers can be used to detect the electric fault. The method also provides an improved fault detection over the conventional overcurrent relays in some situations. All results are obtain using MATLAB/Simulink and are briefly discussed in this paper.