Enhancement of power system protection using wide area information

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Electric power systems including generation, transmission and distribution are protected against various types of faults such as short circuit due to lightning strike, conductor clash and equipment failure. Failure of protection system not only leads to equipment damage and loss of service continuity but it may result in system collapse and blackouts. Even though power system protection has been significantly improved during the last two decades, studies indicate that protection devices are involved, one way or another, in 75% of major disturbances and blackouts. The recent enlargement and increased complexity of power system, highly stressed transmission lines and complex settings of protection devices have increased the risk of protection failure leading to cascading events. In distribution level, by recent integration of renewable energy resources such as wind and solar generations, conventional protection techniques used in distribution system are no longer compelling. In today's power systems, data communication among protection devices is only used in protection systems of critical transmission lines and is limited to very few protective devices. Several initiatives were recently launched for modernizing electric power systems including the development of wide area measurement and communication systems in transmission and distribution levels to realize smarter electric gird. The proposed research program thus aims to investigate the enhancement of existing and development of new power system protection techniques for transmission and distribution systems using wide area information facilitated through existing and near future smart gird infrastructure. The results of this research program will assist various utilities, manufacturers, consulting companies, standards' organizations and other research entities in Canada and the world by providing new techniques and strategies in power system protection and automation to increase reliability and address various protection issues of integrating renewable energy resources. This program will support 2 undergraduates, 2 master's and 2 Ph.D. students to conduct the proposed research program.