ABSTRACT
Electric power systems are subject to many types of disturbances that result in transients. Electrical transients result in abnormal voltages and abnormal electric currents. Overcurrents may damage power equipment due to excessive heat dissipation. This chapter investigates the mechanisms causing electrical transients in transmission equipment, analysis techniques, and methods of mitigation of electrical transients or protection against transients. Electrical transients can be studied by a number of methods. For power system electrical transients, four methods can be applied: graphical methods, analytical methods, numerical methods, and using a transient network analyzer (TNA). The chapter discusses protection devices against transient overvoltages. The simplest representation of power system elements is by means of lumped parameters. In this way, a resistor is represented with an ideal resistance, an inductor with an ideal inductance, and a capacitor with an ideal capacitance. For many applications, power system elements must be represented by distributed parameters.
