A protective relay operates by continuously monitoring electrical parameters, detecting abnormalities, making decisions, and triggering circuit breakers to isolate faulty sections. Engineering use: Relays are used on feeders, transformers, buses, motors, generators, and transmission lines to protect equipment and improve system. A protective relay is an intelligent electrical device designed to detect faults in power systems and initiate corrective actions such as tripping a circuit breaker. They are intended to quickly identify a fault and isolate it so the balance of the system continue to run under normal conditions. For example, unselective protection operation during a medium voltage network fault will cause an outage for an unnecessarily large number of consumers. : 4 The first protective relays were electromagnetic.