Why NERC PRC-027 is Important
The NERC PRC-027 standard requires transmission owners, generation owners, and distribution providers to perform a periodic review of the coordination of their protection systems installed on the Bulk Electric System (BES) to ensure that the protection systems operate in the intended sequence during faults. The standard has three main requirements:
- Establish a process for developing new and revised protection system settings for BES elements such that the protection systems operate in the intended sequence during faults.
- Perform protection system coordination studies periodically, as per options described in the standard.
- Develop new protection system settings by following the process developed in the first requirement point.
PRC-027-1 compliance covers many different aspects, some requiring significant effort for preparation and execution. The PRC-027-1 standard was set to go into effect on October 1, 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, FERC approved a NERC motion to extend the implementation by six months, until April 1, 2021. This extension in the effective date can be utilized by utilities to plan ahead and adopt an approach that is comprehensive and provides long-term efficiency for the protection group. Some considerations for self-evaluation of readiness were discussed in a Quanta Technology webinar and are available here.
Our Approach
Our approach combines expertise in protection systems analysis with automation tools that have been developed and refined in-house over several years. The result is the CORE™ suite of software tools from Quanta Technology. CORE™ software tools not only leverage the advanced protection modeling and simulation capabilities of industry-standard protection simulation software (e.g., CAPE, ASPEN, etc.), but also provide a solution for meeting the PRC-027-1 requirements that are efficient yet comprehensive.
Quanta Technology offers services to perform and manage the labor-intensive and challenging tasks of model preparation and compliance studies and also offers its customers the flexibility to license the automation tools enabling them to perform, as well as manage, these tasks in-house more efficiently. These existing automation-based solutions and applications can be readily adapted to meet utility needs and preferences.
Our Expertise
The Quanta Technology team is also very experienced in performing wide-area protection coordination studies for transmission utilities throughout North America. A comprehensive wide-area protection coordination study provides a solid foundation for future PRC-027 compliance. We have supported numerous utilities with these studies to find latent issues, as well as define clearer criteria for coordination studies. Our team has the experience and technical depth to help utilities in all aspects of preparing for or conducting compliance studies, including PRC-027.
Our Offerings
Why Quanta Technology?
Quanta Technology can provide industry-leading automation-based solutions to assist utilities with all aspects of PRC-027-1 compliance. These capabilities include automating the import of settings to preparing the ASPEN/CAPE protection model for coordination studies, automating the studies, delivering well organized and concise reports for the protection engineer to review, and providing compliance reporting.