Considerations on distance relay setting for transmission line with STATCOM

The distance relay plays an important role in the protection for transmission lines and application of FACTS devices such as Static Synchronous Compensator (STATCOM) would affect distance relay's performance because of the compensation effect. This paper presents the analytical and simulation results of the application of distance relay for the protection of transmission line containing STATCOM. A typical 500kV transmission system employing STATCOM is modeled using Matlab/Simulink and the impact of STATCOM on distance protection scheme is studied for different fault types, fault locations and system configurations. Based on these analytical and simulation results, the performance of distance relay are evaluated and new setting principle of the distance relay are proposed for the transmission line with STATCOM.