Coordination of directional overcurrent relay timing using linear programming

A successive linear programming methodology is presented to treat more effectively those applications where a local structure change is performed to a power system already in operation, and where the modification of the settings of already existent relays is not desirable. The dimension of the optimization problems to be solved is substantially reduced, and a sequence of small linear programming problems is stated and solved in terms of the time dial settings, until a feasible solution is reached. With the proposed technique, the number of relays of the original system to be reset is reduced substantially. It is found that there is a trade-off between the number of relays to be reset and the optimality of the settings of the relays.