2016 International Conference on Control, Instrumentation, Communication and Computational Technologies (ICCICCT)
Identification of Ferroresonance Phenomena
using Wavelet Transforms
S. Poornima,
Research Scholar,
High Voltage division, Anna University,
Chennai, India
poojeyaani@gmail.com
Abstract- With the inclusion of advanced technologies in the
power systems, the issues which are not considered in those
days are in need to be investigated. One of the issues that
captured the consideration in both transmission and
distribution system is Ferroresonance (FR). Though the FR
mitigation was done in earlier days, the utilitys failure
reports indicated its presence in higher magnitudes. This
paper studied the mitigations for potential transformer
suggested by various papers using wavelet transforms. The
energy values proved the presence of FR created by energy
exchange between a grading capacitor and a voltage
transformer in a 500kV Gas Insulated Substation (GIS). The
focus was given to primary voltage and flux of the voltage
transformer which may damage the equipment insulation.
The study results like to suggest that the addition of a
nonlinear inductor provides good damping to FR
oscillations as well as reduces core saturation effects.
Keywords: Ferroresonance, voltage transformers, CWT,
energy
I. INTRODUCTION
Ferroresonance is an interesting switching
phenomena that occurs mostly in distribution substations
but rarely in generation and transmission systems. The
phenomena was very well documented since 1930. The
systems which has saturable inductance possessed.
Equipments in series with capacitors are prone to
ferroresonance. The magnitude of overvoltages and
harmonics induced by FR depends on initial conditions
such as flux, voltage, switching instants, etc., A GIS
system proposed by Shoup. etal [7] was taken as study
system. The authors investigated the FR events by
various connections and disconnections of buses thereby
introduced switching instants. The FR simulations were
done in Electro Magnetic Transient Program (EMTP)
software. The wavelet analysis was done in Matlab. The
iterative wavelet method for system
978-1-5090-5240-0/16/$31.00 2016 IEEE
Dr. C. Pugazhendhi Sugumaran
Assistant Professor (Senior Grade)
High Voltage division,
Anna University Chennai, India
cpsugumar@gmail.com
solution converges rapidly for cases in power
engineering. This method may be applied to the solution
of time varying systems. It will be difficult to include
certain nonlinearities and in the present formulation,
frequency dependent parameters cannot be modeled. If
the wavelet circuit solution is used in conjunction with an
identification technique, the solution of the circuit using
wavelets would be especially convenient. This allows
estimating voltage and current waveforms throughout the
circuit [3,9]. This property enables us to use MATLAB in
this paper for identifying the FR events by taking
Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT).
II. BACKGROUND
A. Ferroresonance
Ferroresonance is a highly nonlinear complex
phenomena which may lead to dielectric and thermal
damages of system components. In case of linear
resonance, current and voltage are linearly related but
dependent on magnitude and frequency of the voltage,
initial flux, core loss and neutral resistor of the
transformer. FR is characterized by a sudden jump of
voltage or current from one state to another one [6].
Stability concepts of FR were analyzed with bifurcation
diagrams [6]. Further FR study was done with ANN,
FEM, etc. Experimental and simulation analysis were
done in EHV substations [1,4]. Capacitor Voltage
Transformer (CVT) was predominate source to FR and its
failure reports implies the silent injuries of FR [5]. Digital
simulations of FR simulations were done in EMTP, ATP,
Matlab, ANSYS, etc [2]. To come up with appropriate FR
control circuit, identification of FR is important. For
online monitoring analysis, wavelet helps to do time
frequency domain analysis.
126
2016 International Conference on Control, Instrumentation, Communication and Computational Technologies (ICCICCT)
B. Wavelet analysis
The application of wavelet transform has been an
exciting development for researchers of several different
fields such as signal processing, image processing,
communications, computer science, etc.,. It is a
mathematical approach for geometric analogies and
filtering concepts.
i. Theory
A wavelet is a small wave, having energy concentrated
in time gives a tool for the analysis of transient and time
varying phenomena. It still has the oscillating wave like
characteristic but also has the ability to allow
simultaneous time and frequency domain analysis with a
flexible mathematical foundation. This is illustrated in the
Fig.1 with the wave (sinusoid) oscillating with amplitude
and therefore, having finite energy and with the wavelet
having its finite energy concentrated around a point [9].
Fig.1. Wavelet Analysis
A wavelet is a function whose two versions of different
frequency are orthogonal to each other. Wavelet
decomposition provides a way of analyzing a signal both
in time and frequency domains. If f is denoted as function
defined on the whole real line, then for a suitably chosen
mother wavelet function , f can be expanded as
f f
j
f (t ) w
j f k f
jk 2 2
< (2 j t  k )
Where, the functions (2 j t-k) are all orthogonal to each
other. The coefficients wjk gives information about the
behavior of the function f concentrating on the effects
of scale around 2-j near time tx2-j. This wavelet
decomposition of a function is closely related to a similar
decomposition (the discrete wavelet transform, DWT) of
a signal observed in discrete time. Frequency based
analysis is very common, but it is not ideally suitable for
transient analysis as time information is lost. For non-
stationary signals, wavelet analysis allows the use of long
time intervals where more precise low frequency
information is required and shorter regions where high
frequency information is required [10].
ii. Continuous wavelet Transform (CWT)
978-1-5090-5240-0/16/$31.00 2016 IEEE
The CWT is also continuous in terms of shifting during
computation. The analyzing wavelet is shifted smoothly
all over the full domain of the analyzed function. As the
continuous wavelet transform is the sum over all time of
the signal multiplied by scaled and shifted versions of the
wavelet, this produces wavelet coefficients that are a
function of scale and position.
Let f(t) be any square integral function. The CWT of f(t)
with respect to a wavelet (t) is defined as per equation
(2)
( , )= ( ) (2)
| |
Where a determines the amount of time scaling, b decides
the time shifting and (t) calculates the energy
signal.[3,9]
An input was taken and compared to a section at the
beginning of the original signal. Calculation of a number
C represents how closely correlated the wavelet is with
this section of the signal. The higher the coefficient C
is, the more the similarity. More precisely, if the signal
energy and the wavelet energy are equal to one, C may be
interpreted as a correlation coefficient. The results depend
on the shape of the original signal. The wavelet is shifted
to the right and above process will be repeated until the
whole signal get concealed [10].
The results of the CWT will be wavelet coefficients C,
interms of location and scale. Multiplying each
coefficient by an appropriate scaled and shifted wavelet
yields the basic wavelets of the original signal. The CWT
plot indicates momentary changes which highlighting the
periodicity.
C. Energy analysis
The frequency components provides energy bursts at the
capacitor energizing and de-energizing instants. Thus, the
low or high frequency components at any level could be
(1) used for the identification of ferroresonance. A time
window technique was used to calculate the RMS value
of energy associated with the CWT coefficients using
equation (3), as follows:
= (3)
where E1, E2, En denote the instantaneous values of
energy.
Ferroresonance could generate continuous overvoltages
which is not similar with the temporary overvoltages
during switching transients. This study examined the FR
transients with respect to this property. The ratio between
the RMS values of cumulative energy from the CWT
coefficients in two consecutive time windows was
calculated to verify the occurrence of ferroresonance [8].
The selection of shorter time windows might tangled with
quasi-periodic or chaotic modes of ferroresonance. Thus,
127
2016 International Conference on Control, Instrumentation, Communication and Computational Technologies (ICCICCT)

the length of the time window was set at two cycles in two cycles of before and during FR events were used to
order to prevent wrong detections. calculate the energy values.

III. SYSTEM SIMULATION

In this analysis overvoltage was created due to the energy

transfer between circuit breaker grading capacitor from a) VT primary voltage without damping circuit
live gas insulated bus to deenergized VT connected
buses. The assumptions, simplification of the system and
calculations are done as per the paper [7]. Care was taken
in the study system such that thermal and voltage
insulation ratings of the VT were coordinated with the b) VT primary voltage with R=1ohm
expected overvoltages. The sustained low frequency
oscillations was considered for wavelet analysis as the
focus is on only equipment insulation.
c) VT primary voltage with 0.24pf burden

d) VT primary voltage with nonlinear inductor

Fig.4 VT primary voltages under different damping cases

Fig.3 EMTP model of study system The VT primary voltages and the VT flux under different
cases were shown in Fig.4 and Fig.5 respectively.
The case system shown in Fig.3 with equivalent grading
capacitance of 1950pF was simulated in EMTP software.
The CWT was applied to FR sustained oscillations using
Matlab. The CWT and its 3D plot shows the FR
oscillations without and with damping circuits. The a) VT flux without damping circuit
energy values were calculated to verify the presence of
FR oscillations using CWT coefficients.

IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

b) VT flux with R=1ohm
The study system was simulated in EMTP without and
damping circuits. Damping circuit components were
considered as three cases like resistor, low and high
powerfactor burden and nonlinear inductor. Here the
nonlinear inductor damping circuit was given in the c) VT flux with 0.24pf burden
original paper [7]. As the nonlinear reactance plays major
role in FR event, the VT primary voltage and flux
oscillations were given the prior preference. The FR was
created at 0.2s and maintained till 0.4secs. The study
d) VT primary voltage with nonlinear inductor
system was examined with different connections of buses
due to energization and disconnections of the circuit. The Fig.5 VT fluxes under different damping cases
system with maximum number of connections was
chosen to analyze the maximum FR effect with wavelets. The CWT plots of VT primary voltages and flux were
The performance of damping circuits was clearly shown in Fig.6 and Fig.7 respectively. The CWT
examined though this study. coefficients were obtained for each signal using db1
The CWT having different wavelets such as db1, Coif5, wavelet.
Morl, Haar, Bior 1.1 were applied to the generated FR
oscillations. The Daubechies1 wavelet was chosen to
analyze as every wavelet gave approximately similar
results. The 3D graph of CWT coefficients showed the
instant variations of the signals. The CWT coefficients of

978-1-5090-5240-0/16/$31.00 2016 IEEE 128

2016 International Conference on Control, Instrumentation, Communication and Computational Technologies (ICCICCT)

a) VT primary voltage without damping circuit a) VT flux without damping circuit

b) VT flux with R=1ohm

b) VT primary voltage with R=1ohm

c) VT flux with 0.24pf burden

c) VT primary voltage with 0.24pf burden

d) VT flux with nonlinear inductor

d) VT primary voltage with nonlinear inductor

Fig.4 CWT plots of VT primary voltages under different damping
cases.
The continuous variations in FR oscillations were well
understood by the colormap of the CWT coefficients.
Fig.5 CWT plots of VT flux under different damping cases.
The energy values of voltages and fluxes also verified the
presence of ferroresonance events. Table.1 and 2 shows the
energy values of VT during the events.

978-1-5090-5240-0/16/$31.00 2016 IEEE 129

2016 International Conference on Control, Instrumentation, Communication and Computational Technologies (ICCICCT)

V. CONCLUSION
Table.1 Energy values of VT primary voltage
Case Before FR During FR The ferroresonance study for a 500kV GIS substation was
Without 3.05e10 done using CWT analysis. The CWT coefficients of
damping before and during ferroresonance was used to identify its
R=1ohm 1.83e7 8.78e9 presence. If the energy value can be given as an input to
0.24pf 4.68e9 IEDs, the abnormal conditions will be sensed easily.
burden Accordingly the relay and then the circuit breaker can
Nonlinear 5.45e8 1.2e9 react. Though the utilities are happy with the pure resistor
burden as damping circuit, inclusion of a non resistive inductor in
the secondary of VT provides good damping to FR
Table.2 Energy values of VT flux
oscillations. The solution technique given by base paper
Case Before FR During FR
provided the better results among others. The cases
Without 5.69e4
damping discussed can provide solutions only to quasi periodic and
R=1ohm 967.41 1.587e5 fundamental FR modes. Still a damping circuit can be
well modelled to handle all modes of FR events.
0.24pf 5.81e4
burden REFERENCES
Nonlinear 4.09e3 1.655e8 [1] Janssens, N., Even, A., Denoel, H., Monfils, P.A., Determination of
burden the Risk of Ferroresonance in High Voltage Networks.
Experimental Verification on a 245 kV Voltage Transformer,
Sixth International Symposium on High Voltage Engineering, New
Case1: Without damping circuit, the primary voltage had Orleans, LA, USA, Aug. 28-Sept. 1, 1989.
20Hz periodic oscillations and not able to settle down. [2] Ferracci, P., Ferroresonance, Cahier Technique Schneider n o 190,
The primary flux got increased from 0.443Wb to 1.27Wb ECT90, March 1998.
[3] S, Mallet,W.L.Hwang, Singularity detection and processing with
due to ferroresonance. The flux waveform also had 20Hz wavelets, IEEE transactions on Information Theory, vol.38, n0.2,
unstable oscillations. The energy values of CWT pp.617-643, Mar-1992.
coefficients of VT primary voltage and flux proved the [4] David A Jacobson, Examples of Ferroresonance in a High Voltage
presence of FR. Power System., Power Engineering Society General Meeting, Vol.
2, 2003.
Case2: With R=1ohm, the primary voltage having [5] Ab. Halim Abdul Bakr, Cheng Hock Lim, Saad Mekhilef,
nonperiodic oscillations got suppressed by 22.1%. The Investigation of Transient Performance of Capacitor Voltage
VT primary voltage and flux oscillations had 7Hz and Transformer, First International Power and Energy Conference,
17Hz components. The fundamental flux got increased by Malaysia, November 28- 29, 2006.
[6] Hamid ramdanesh, Ferroresonance Elimination in 275kV
1.82times during FR. The energy values of CWT substation, Electrical and Electronic Engineering 2 (2), 54-59,
coefficients of VT primary voltage and flux proved the 2012.
presence of FR. [7] D. Shoup, J. Paserba, D.Sullivan, P. Bolin and R. Whiteside,
Case3: The relays and burden connected to the secondary Ferroresonance Analysis of a 500kV Gas Insulated Substation,
[8] Chun-Wei Huang, JyhCherng Gu, Ming-Ta Yang, Applying
of the VT varies from 0.2 to 0.4pf. With 0.24pf burden, Wavelet Transform to Ferroresonance Detection and Protection,
the primary voltage oscillations got suppressed by International Journal of Electrical, Computer, Energetic, Electronic
39.56%. The VT primary and flux had periodic and Communication Engineering Vol.8, No.7, 2014.
oscillations of 20Hz components. The fundamental flux [9] Jaideva C.Goswami, Andrew K.Chan, Fundamental of wavelets,
A Wiley-Interscience publication. 1999.
got increased by 1.92times during FR. The energy values [10] Raghuveer M.Rao, Ajit.Bopardikar,Wavelet transforms:
of CWT coefficients of VT primary voltage and flux Introduction to theory and applications, Pearson Education Asia
proved again the presence of FR. The results were better Pvt.Limited , Ed.II, 2001.
than case 2 having pure resistor.
Case4: With nonlinear inductance as proposed by Shoup
etal, the primary voltage oscillations got suppressed by VI. BIOGRAPHIES
73.69%. The VT primary and flux had periodic
oscillations and settled down after 8cycles. The S. Poornima received her Bachelor in Electrical &
Electronics Engineering from C. Abdul Hakeem
fundamental flux got increased by 1.79times during FR. College of Engineering, Vellore in 2003 and Master
The energy values of fundamental components itself was Degree in Power Systems engineering from
different from that of other cases. The energy values of Government College of Technology, Coimbatore in
CWT coefficients of VT primary voltage and flux proved 2005. She has 10 years of teaching experience in
engineering colleges. Currently she is a full time
the presence of FR. research scholar in Anna University, Chennai. Her
area of interest includes Electrical Machines, study of ferroresonance in
power systems.

978-1-5090-5240-0/16/$31.00 2016 IEEE 130

2016 International Conference on Control, Instrumentation, Communication and Computational Technologies (ICCICCT)

Dr. C. Pugazhendhi Sugumaran received the

B.E. degree in Electrical and Electronics
Engineering from Government college of
Engineering Tirunelveli, affiliated to
Manonmanium Sundaranar University in 1997
and M.E. degree in High-Voltage Engineering
from Anna University, Chennai in 2001. He was
awarded Ph.D. in Electrical and Electronics
Engineering from Anna University, Chennai in
2011. He has 18 years of teaching experience in
various Engineering Colleges. He has published 60 papers in various
International Journals, Conferences and Symposiums. He works as a
technical paper reviewer for various International Journals. His name
was also nominated for various awards. He is doing research in the
Applications of Nano technology in Electrical Engineering. His area of
interest includes Electromagnetic Interference, Nano Dielectrics, Nano
Motors, Nano Transformers, Nano Capacitors and Nano Electrical
Apparatus. He is the member of various Professional bodies like IEEE,
ISTE, ACEEE, IAENG, IACSIT, UACEE, IDES, IETE and SCIEI.
Presently, he is working as Assistant Professor in the Division of High
Voltage Engineering, Department of Electrical and Electronics
Engineering, Anna University, Chennai..

978-1-5090-5240-0/16/$31.00 2016 IEEE 131