3. Digital protection

3.1 Presentation

The last 30 years have seen major changes in protection technology. Electromechanical relays have been replaced by static and then digital protection devices, with each change bringing a reduction in size and an increase in functionality. At the same time, reliability has been maintained or improved, and availability has increased thanks to the presence of self-checking features not available on older relays.

The use of digital techniques has enabled the development of new, high-performance protection algorithms.