Relay Testing
Verifying the Brains of Your Electrical Safety System
Protective relays are the "brains" of your electrical protection system. These devices must instantaneously decide whether to trip a breaker during a fault. If they fail to trip, equipment is destroyed; if they misoperate, production halts unnecessarily. You can expect misoperations or failed trips that lead to catastrophic events, costly equipment damage, or severe safety hazards when you don't undergo regular verification. The best way to solve the issue is with Relay Testing services.
Blue Runner Switchgear ensures these critical devices and their settings are tested, calibrated, and proven to perform reliably, minimizing downtime and maximizing safety. Schedule your protective relay audit and testing with our skilled team of experts.
When Are Protective Relay Testing Services Essential?
Electrical relay maintenance is required to meet regulatory body and insurance mandates and must be performed by a NETA-certified company. You'll need this service when:
- Commissioning New Systems: Required acceptance testing to confirm new relays are correctly installed, set, and functional before initial energization.
- Routine Maintenance Cycles: Standard power system testing protocol to ensure aging components and settings remain accurate and drift-free.
- After Major Faults or Trips:
It is essential to verify that the relay performed correctly during the event and ensure it remains calibrated for future faults.
Our Comprehensive Protective Relay Testing Service Offerings
Modern relays are the brain of the power system protection scheme. They require specialized test equipment and highly trained technicians to perform accurate verification. Our team at Blue Runner Switchgear can assist with:
Protection Relay Functional Testing:
Protection relay function testing is the core of relay maintenance. It involves secondary injection—safely injecting simulated fault currents and voltages into the relay terminals. The goal is to verify that the relay accurately measures these inputs and operates its trip contacts within the specified time limits for all protection elements. When this functional check is performed, it verifies that the relay will perform its intended function of rapidly clearing a genuine fault.
Relay Settings Verification: Relay settings verification is a critical service that ensures the programmed values, such as time curves, pickup currents, and logic, are stored in the relay align precisely with the documented coordination study. The coordination study dictates how relays should operate sequentially to isolate only the faulted section of the system.
- Safety Compliance: Incorrect settings can lead to nuisance trips or, worse, cause relays to fail to trip, significantly increasing Arc Flash hazards due to prolonged fault-clearing times.
- Efficiency: To maintain system selectivity and reliability, we confirm that the logic is optimized.
Ground Fault Relay Testing: For personnel safety and preventing equipment damage, ground fault relay testing is a specialized process that focuses on confirming the relay will correctly isolate a ground fault condition. Ground faults often involve lower currents than phase-to-phase faults, requiring highly sensitive and accurate relay operation. We verify the time delay and pickup settings to ensure the ground fault protection trips quickly without being susceptible to false trips from normal system transients.
Current & Potential Transformer Verification: Relays rely entirely on the accuracy of the supporting Current Transformers (CT) and Potential Transformers (PT) to sense the system's current and voltage. We perform tests to ensure that these devices accurately translate the high system values into safe, measurable secondary values for the relay.
- CT Testing to ensure they maintain accuracy under fault conditions.
- PT Testing: with ratio and polarity checks. Relay performance is entirely dependent on the integrity of the CT and PT chain.
End-to-End Relay Testing Checks & Scheme Verification: End-to-end relay testing is typically used for complex schemes and involves advanced communication and synchronization between test equipment at both ends of a protected line or circuit, confirming that all components—the relays, the communications channel (fiber optic, microwave, etc.), and the associated circuit breakers—operate together as a coordinated system within the necessary microsecond time frame to ensure high-speed, reliable fault isolation.
Guaranteed Performance: Deliverables from Your NETA Certified Testing Partner
When you work with Blue Runner Switchgear, we validate relay settings to ensure the programming is correct and supports your facility's coordination requirements. We also provide detailed, NETA-certified reports documenting the as-found and as-left condition of every relay, providing a clear audit trail. We provide proof that your power system testing program meets all NETA and NFPA 70B requirements, mitigating regulatory risk.
Blue Runner Switchgear is your full-service, NETA Certified partner for Relay Testing Services. We provide specialized expertise to industrial and commercial clients nationwide from our centralized location in Cave City, KY. Ensure your system's brains are sharp by
requesting a relay testing quote today.
