Hardware-in-the-loop Model-based Testing of a Motor Relay with Secondary Injection

The integration of new protection strategies is necessary to improve the operation of industrial power systems and commercial power systems. The IEEE 242 considers factors like motor importance, rating, thermal limit of rotor and stator, system grounding, type of motor controller, and the point of connection to other motors. The value of a laboratory to test motor relays is of great importance for industrial facilities like petrochemical, pulp, and mining. An approach for testing an industrial motor relay in a laboratory environment is presented in this paper. For this purpose, Hardware-in-the-loop simulations capable of making realistic tests according to the characteristics of the industrial power system are used. The setup consists of three stages. The first stage is modeling the system in ATPdraw and extract waveforms. The second stage is a validation of the power system in the simulation software ETAP. The last stage consists in injecting the waveforms generated in the first stage using a secondary injection relay. The results of the simulated cases are compared with the settings introduced to the relay, having an accuracy of more than 95%.