The paper presents a new adaptive 100% stator ground protection for high-impedance-grounded (HIG) synchronous generators. This is done by first examining reliability, that is, dependability and security of the most prominent conventional 3rd-harmonic voltage schemes. Using field data from various capacity industrial generators, it is shown that the conventional 3rd-harmonic differential voltage scheme, while being dependable, lacks security. Using the same field data, it is shown that the new adaptive scheme is a highly secure and sensitive scheme. Moreover, the new adaptive scheme is a zero-setting scheme which does not require any setting calculations, 3rd-harmonic voltage testings, or additional hardware. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]