Digital protective relay

In utility and industrial electric power transmission and distribution systems, a digital protective relay is a computer-based system with software-based protection algorithms for the detection of electrical faults. Such relays are also termed as microprocessor type protective relays. They are functional replacements for electro-mechanical protective relays and may include many protection functions in one unit, as well as providing metering, communication, and self-test functions.

The digital protective relay is a protective relay that uses a microprocessor to analyze power system voltages, currents or other process quantities for the purpose of detection of faults in an electric power system or industrial process system. A digital protective relay may also be called a "numeric protective relay".

Low voltage and low current signals (i.e., at the secondary of a voltage transformers and current transformers) are brought into a low pass filter that removes frequency content above about 1/3 of the sampling frequency (a relay A/D converter needs to sample faster than twice per cycle of the highest frequency that it is to monitor). The AC signal is then sampled by the relay's analog to digital converter from 4 to 64 (varies by relay) samples per power system cycle. As a minimum, magnitude of the incoming quantity, commonly using Fourier transform concepts (RMS and some form of averaging) would be used in a simple relay function. More advanced analysis can be used to determine phase angles, power, reactive power, impedance, waveform distortion, and other complex quantities.

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