Power system protection demonstration laboratory

A Power System Protection  lab will be established in this project to meet the needs from each of the 4 PhD students and to demonstrate the developed technology. The laboratory will consist of modern over-current, directional over-current, distance and differential relays. Since the purpose of the project is to utilize smart grid infrastructures, modern relays with Ethernet and IEC61850 communication capabilities are required. An important aspect is interoperability to ensure integration of relays from different vendors. The communication protocols developed will be either implemented or emulated in the lab to provide experimentation and better feedback.  All communication protocols will be implemented in the Click prototyping environment allowing for seamless transition between simulation and piloting [41].

The laboratory project is divided in three parts: I)  Establish a test bench for relay setting and testing, including use of high speed data from the local process bus  for transformer and bus differential,  over-current, and distance protection; II)  Establish a SCADA interface with data concentrators and protocol converters to connect with the relay test bench; III) Establish a communication system to share remote synchrophasor data for wide-area protection and investigate the effect of time delays. Initial scenarios are line differential and pilot protection and out-of-step (power swing) detection in a two-terminal system.

Communication with the Smartgrid operation center at Michigan Technological University will be established. Communication switches, fiber optics, and data concentrators have to be purchased. 
This project plans to employ four PhD students. This gives both social and scientific benefits, and extends the perspective. The PhD students can support and inspire each other and more easily identify joint publications and interesting research aspects. The following synergies can be identified;

• Common use of the power system protection lab. Testing of relay responses and communication.
• Co-operation between the PhD-students having common interests in simulations, methods/algorithms, and relay testing.
• Co-operation between PhD-student regarding communication requirements and possibilities.

[41] Thi Minh Do V., Xie L., Kure Ø.; “Performance Evaluation of nsclick Simulator for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks”. The 13th International Conference on Advanced Communication Technology, 2011.