A conventional CT core sees this DC surge and saturates instantly. Its output collapses to zero, just when the protection relay needs truth the most. The relay sees no current —and thinks the line is healthy. The circuit breaker stays closed. The tree burns. The lights go out across three towns.
Mei's CT passes at 15 VA. But at 4 VA (25% of rated), a resonance with the cable capacitance causes a 2-degree phase shift. Fail. The design is rejected. The team discovers that their secondary winding has too many turns, creating parasitic capacitance. They respool the winding with a different insulation—a change driven not by electrical theory, but by the soul of 61869-2: accuracy must be robust, not fragile . iec 61869 2
The old standard asked: "What is your ratio at 100% current, with a purely resistive burden?" A conventional CT core sees this DC surge
Let us go to a factory in Shenyang, where a TPX class CT is being type-tested. A test engineer, call her Mei, applies a 20 kA primary current with a 70% DC offset—a "worst-case" per 61869-2. The circuit breaker stays closed
The senior engineer, a woman who lived through the 2003 blackout, answers: "The old grid was a predictable beast. It was a horse. You could ride it with a blindfold. Today's grid is a wild flock of birds—solar inverters, wind farms, HVDC links. They create harmonics, sub-synchronous oscillations, and DC transients that the old CTs never dreamed of. The 5P20 would saturate in 2 milliseconds on a modern fault. It would lie. And we would believe the lie."