Analysis and Redesign of Protection System for a Sugar Company

Illovo is Africa’s largest sugar producer, within the Illovo group each operational entity has its own unique power system. Each mill faces various challenges with regards to layout, loading, operational conditions and it’s utility. It is of utmost importance that the protection settings applied to the electrical infrastructure are efficient, accurate and reliable. This paper presents the analysis and design of protection settings applied to overcurrent relays in an industrial network. This is achieved by analyzing the past protection model designed and comparing it with the current system, thus highlighting the deficiencies. A short circuit and load flow analysis is carried out on the current system, using the engineering software ETAP (Electrical Transient Analysis Program). The result produced are than used to correctly implement new relay co-ordination settings to achieve fault discrimination within the network.