To provide effective and reliable protection to the power system, a protective relay must have the following essential functional characteristics: Selective, Fast, Stable, Reliability, Sensitivity, Simple Construction and Installation Mechanism, and Cost-effective. Protective relays and devices have been developed over 100 years ago to provide “lastline”of defense for the electrical systems. They are intended to quickly identify a fault and isolate it so the balance of the system continue to run under normal conditions. For example, unselective protection operation during a medium voltage network fault will cause an outage for an unnecessarily large number of consumers. Basic. Characteristics of Protective Relay elements using different operating principles. Types of Protective Relays: Protective relays are categorized by their mechanism (electromagnetic, static, mechanical) and function. A protective relay is an intelligent electrical device designed to detect faults in power systems and initiate corrective actions such as tripping a circuit breaker.
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