Distance Element Improvements - A Case Study

In August 1999, a thunderstorm and lightning strike caused relay misoperations and a two-minute outage at a petrochemical plant. The outage led to an exhaustive root-cause analysis and subsequent litigation. This paper shares details about the event and its root cause, contrasts distance and fault identification algorithms, demonstrates methodical analysis techniques, and proposes solutions. This paper also highlights that engineers face the challenge of always staying current with their experience and understanding of the "state-of-the-art." The paper challenges engineers to do the right thing, find root cause, and solve problems.