Novel Differential Protection Approach of UHV AC Transmission Lines Based on Tellegen's Quasi-Power Theorem

When current differential protection is applied to an AC transmission line, synchronous sampling at the two ends is required. The use of GPS synchronization increases the difficulty and cost of project implementation while the use of 'ping-pong' synchronization requires that the communication channel has equal transmission and reception delay. To overcome the impact of these issues, power differential protection has been proposed. However, power differential protection cannot fully identify the fault zone for solid single-line-to-ground fault. This paper proposes a novel differential protection approach based on the Tellegen's quasi-power theorem. The approach retains the advantages of current differential protection. Meanwhile, it is not affected by load condition and distributed capacitance. This paper also proposes a time synchronization method based on the Tellegen's quasi-power theorem to calculate and correct the time synchronization error. Therefore, the proposed pilot protection has a high synchronization accuracy and has no requirement on the communication delay. In this paper, different simulation models are established by using MATLAB/Simulink and PSCAD and extensive simulation studies verify the effectiveness of the proposed protection approach and time synchronization method.