The employment of new technologies, operating paradigms, and increasing regulatory requirements have placed new challenges upon Protection and Control engineers. Proper implementation of protection systems is a critical aspect in ensuring the safe and reliable operation of the modern electric grid. Quanta Technology offers a unique combination of expert knowledge and innovative software-based tools that enable engineers to perform extensive protection performance evaluations that can confirm the intended operation of protection systems under a wide range of system conditions. Our approach can help protection engineers catch issues before they happen and fulfill a critical role in properly implementing critical protection systems.
Automated Protection Performance Studies
Most popular industry-standard short-circuit software packages used within the power industry offer powerful simulation capabilities that can determine the responses of protective devices to system events such as faults. The software approach to these simulations enable engineers to easily study a variety of conditions, such as system outages, event types, and fault locations.
Quanta Technology’s CORE® Suite provides automation tools to leverage the repeatable nature of these simulations, making feasible the study of protection schemes under a range of system conditions. These studies highlight different aspects of protection performance, providing engineers with a comprehensive view of their protection systems.
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These protection performance studies are part of a holistic digital transformation program to implement automation-based solutions.
Sensitivity
Sensitivity studies consider the performance of each protection element against a set of criteria that represents desired protection characteristics. These are commonly defined according to protection philosophy requirements.
For a distance Zone 1 test, the sensitivity study may look at the extent of this element operation (typically should be around 85% of the study line) under a variant of system conditions and contingencies.
Typical aspects considered in sensitivity studies include:
- Distance Test: Comparison of actual reach of distance elements against their required percentage of line impedance (typically 85% for Zone 1)
- Fault Detector Test: Comparison of pickup setting against fault current at remote bus
- Overcurrent Test: Comparison of pickup setting against remote line end fault current
- Current Transformer Test: Confirm close-in secondary fault current does not exceed required value
Quanta Technology’s CORE® Sensitivity module provides engineers with the capability to run these sensitivity studies in an automated fashion, and output the results in a form that facilitates easy review and identification of potential issues.
CORE® SUITE
Sensitivity and Coordination are modules within the CORE® (Compliance, Operations, Reliability, Engineering) Suite of automation tools. CORE® is Quanta Technology’s platform for automation-based solutions to address data, simulation, evaluation, digital transformation, and reporting needs.
Modules within CORE® can access the same libraries of protection logic functions, such as the Relay Catalog that enables interpretation of device configurations. The CORE® platform enables seamless sharing of data and integration of processes across modules and applications.
Coordination
Coordination studies consider the performance of protective devices against protection devices on adjacent equipment to determine whether operations occur in the required order. Interactions between different protection devices can be complex, especially when considering a larger study area or under different system conditions. Automation enables these studies to consider many different contingencies and fault conditions, providing engineers with comprehensive insight into how their protection schemes will operate under most conceivable scenarios.
Quanta Technology’s CORE® Coordination module provides engineers with the capability to run these coordination studies in an automated fashion for a single line or for a much larger study scope (wide-area protection coordination).
To help engineers navigate the complexity and volume of coordination results, our solution processes the study outputs and provides engineers with a summarized report that highlights potential coordination concerns, and under which circumstances they occur. This summarization of results enhances engineer’s capabilities to determine which elements may cause coordination issues and what measures need to be taken to fix them.
Customized to Meet Your Requirements
Quanta Technology believes in providing solutions that directly align with customer needs, and therefore allows for configuration of the CORE® Sensitivity and Coordination modules to accommodate customers’ specific internal processes and conventions.
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