A fast time–frequency transform based differential relaying scheme for UPFC based double-circuit transmission line

•A fast S-Transformed based differential relaying scheme.•Differential energy provides reliable measure for fault pattern recognition.•The response time is within two cycles from fault inception.•More selective and dependable.

This paper presents a new differential relaying scheme for a mutually coupled, double circuit transmission line in presence of Unified Power Flow Controller (UPFC) in the line. The process starts at retrieving the three phase current signals at both ends of the transmission line synchronously and processing it though the time–frequency transform such as Fast Discrete S-Transform to derive the spectral energy content of the current signals. The differential spectral energy of current signals (difference between the spectral energy of the current signal at the sending and receiving ends, respectively) of the respective phases of transmission line is used to register the fault pattern. The proposed approach includes fault detection and classification along with identification of the fault section with respect to UPFC location in one of the double-circuit transmission line. The extensive test results indicate that the proposed differential relaying scheme is highly reliable in registering fault patterns in UPFC based transmission line including wide variations in operating parameters of the power network.