Teaching Protective Relaying Design and Application Using New Modeling and Simulation Tools

As the smart grid concepts are emphasized lately, the need to modernize the power engineering education is also well recognized. This paper presents a set of newly developed modeling, simulation and testing tools aimed at better understanding of the design concept and related applications for protective relaying and substation automation solutions for the smart grid. Since the smart grid applications require integration of data from multiple IEDs (intelligent electronic devices), understanding properties of each IED type in detail, as well as their responses to the power system events is needed. In addition, understanding the communication requirements to perform data integration is also important. To illustrate how the mentioned smart grid issues may be taught, the following advanced teaching approaches are presented: (1) Use of modeling and simulation means to better understand interaction between the relays and power system; (2) Use of IED test facilities to better understand performance of physical devices used for protection, monitoring and control; (3) Utilization of communication network modeling tools to simulate the communication network within SAS (substation automation system). Examples showing the use of proposed techniques for teaching the fundamentals and applications are presented. The examples demonstrate the adequacy and efficiency of the proposed techniques.