Development of a Power Systems Protection Laboratory through University-Industry Partnership

Abstract

At the 2007 National Science Foundation workshop on 'The Future Power Engineering Workforce' participants from US government, academia, and the private sector discussed the looming shortage of power engineering graduates to replace large numbers of projected retirees in the power engineering sector. The group identified the key drivers of this shortage and suggested a series of measures which, if implemented, would add to the ongoing renaissance in power engineering. Some of these measures have been adopted and reflected in the development of a power system protection lab at Penn State Harrisburg. With the support of local utility industry a new lab has been developed that integrates the latest devices and software in the electric utility industry into power systems courses. Instructional modules on key aspects of the new lab are developed to assist both the course instructor and future students enrolled in Power Systems Analysis courses. This paper outlines the facilitation and design process in the development of a modern power engineering laboratory.

Virtual instrumentation based learning methodology for teaching power system measurement and protection

“…Low‐cost hardware architecture platform is designed in for a real‐time implementation of power distribution systems, mentioning that could be useful for applications covering advanced protection relaying, Volt‐Var control, distributed generation management, storage control, and cybersecurity assessment, among others. Idowu , outlines the design process in the development of a power system protection engineering laboratory using a SCADA. Several computer‐based simulations and practical laboratory experiments were developed in ; PSCAD and ETAP power system analysis software tools were introduced to demonstrate the performance and coordination of different protection relays using a universal relay test set.…”

Educational simulation platform for micro-grid

“…Some MATLAB-based simulation tools for stability analysis are introduced in [6]- [12], and the comparison of their features is presented in [6]. Recently, some universities have started to adopt ETAP software as computer simulation tool in teaching power system [13]- [16], for example, students can understand the design of industrial power distribution systems by applying short circuit study and flow analysis with the help of ETAP [15]. Furthermore, ETAP is used to demonstrate topics like utility economics, protective device coordination and voltage management to students [16].…”

“…Recently, some universities have started to adopt ETAP software as computer simulation tool in teaching power system [13]- [16], for example, students can understand the design of industrial power distribution systems by applying short circuit study and flow analysis with the help of ETAP [15]. Furthermore, ETAP is used to demonstrate topics like utility economics, protective device coordination and voltage management to students [16]. However, to the best of our knowledge, most of them only involve conventional power systems; micro-grid topics are predominantly focused in research aspect whereas coursework students are rarely exposed to this topic in the laboratory component of power system subjects due to lack of suitable learning package.…”