Enhancement of power system protection using wide area information

包括发电、输电和配电在内的电力系统受到各种故障的保护，如雷击引起的短路、导体碰撞和设备故障。保护系统的故障不仅会导致设备损坏和业务中断，还可能导致系统崩溃和停电。尽管电力系统保护在过去二十年中有了显着改善，但研究表明，75%的重大干扰和停电都与保护装置有关。近年来，电力系统规模的扩大和复杂性的增加，输电线路的高应力和保护装置的复杂设置增加了保护失效导致级联事件的风险。在配电网层面，随着风能、太阳能等可再生能源的整合，配电网中采用的传统保护技术已不再具有吸引力。在当今的电力系统中，保护装置之间的数据通信仅用于关键传输线的保护系统中，并且仅限于极少数保护装置。为实现电网智能化，发展输配电层面的广域测量和通信系统等电力系统现代化建设已启动若干举措。因此，拟议的研究计划旨在通过现有和不久的将来的智能电网基础设施促进广域信息，研究输电和配电系统现有和新电力系统保护技术的增强和发展。该研究项目的成果将通过提供电力系统保护和自动化方面的新技术和策略，帮助加拿大和世界各地的各种公用事业、制造商、咨询公司、标准组织和其他研究实体，以提高可靠性，并解决整合可再生能源的各种保护问题。本项目资助本科生2名、硕士生2名、博士生2名进行拟设研究项目。

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.