The SEL-FT50 and SEL-FR12 Fault Transmitter and Receiver System provides your recloser controls and protective relays with the speed and insight to make better tripping decisions that benefit the entire feeder. It’s a simple and economical solution for faster tripping, better coordination, and higher system reliability for distribution protection.
Until recently, the practical choice in distribution protection was to sacrifice tripping speed for coordination between fuses, recloser curves, and relays. That meant routinely waiting hundreds of milliseconds or more before clearing a fault because the recloser control didn’t know where the fault occurred.
Not anymore.
With the SEL-FT50 and SEL-FR12 System, your recloser control or relay will receive fault indications within 6 ms. That’s because the SEL-FT50 Fault Transmitters immediately detect when a fault occurred and send this information to the SEL-FR12 Fault Receiver, which communicates the information to the protection device. Now, the recloser control or relay knows which line the fault is on and can make a faster tripping decision that’s better for your reliability.
Before, you had to choose one coordination scheme per recloser control—fuse blowing or fuse saving. While one choice might have been preferable for a majority of the line segment, it might not have been ideal for every lateral or branch.
But now, you don’t have to choose.
With the SEL-FT50 and SEL-FR12 System, you can mix fuse-blowing and fuse-saving schemes within the recloser control to address the specific needs of each lateral. And because your recloser control gets branch-specific fault data within 6 ms, it now has the insight and ability to adapt its protection scheme to fit the situation.
You can also mix protection schemes at underground-to-overhead and overhead-to-underground transitions. Placing an SEL-FT50 at the transition point means the recloser control or relay can see which side the fault is on, so it can block reclosing for underground faults but enable reclosing to clear temporary overhead faults.
Instead of searching the entire feeder for a fault—at times in poor weather conditions or difficult terrain—just drive straight to the fault location.
The SEL-FT50 and SEL-FR12 can send fault location information back to your SCADA system. Now, your line crew knows where they’re going, can plan ahead for the route, and can restore power sooner.
Optimizing protection schemes to best fit the needs of each line segment improves your metrics for momentary faults (MAIFI) and outage duration (SAIDI). Finding faults faster allows you to restore power faster, improving your restoration metrics (CAIDI).
The faster your system clears a fault, the less stress there is on your lines and equipment. With the SEL-FT50 and SEL-FR12 System, your recloser controls and relays don’t need to wait for coordination delays, so faults are cleared faster, which reduces wear on transformers and other equipment.
The longer the fault remains on the line, the more likely it can result in dangerous situations like fires or electrocution. By applying the SEL-FT50 and SEL-FR12 System, you can clear faults as fast as possible to improve safety.