Switchgear & Protection

This course covers the planning, design and operation of electrical protection systems for the generation, transmission and distribution systems of electric energy:  planning, design standards and performance requirements; principles and types of protection systems (over-current, impedance, differential, backup, fuses); application of protection to generators, motors, transmission lines, transformers, busbars, and distribution; sources of overvoltage, lightning impact on transmission and distribution networks, surge propagation theory, circuit interruption theory; instrument transformers steady state and transient behavior; electrical studies for planning and design of protection systems; power system communications for protection application.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

1.      Demonstrate an understanding of the role of protection in modern power systems

2.      Describe the operation of a range of protection schemes

3.      Outline the protection system for an item of electrical plant

4.      Describe the role of insulation co-ordination in the design and operation of power networks, including the role of circuit breakers

5.      Evaluate and assess recent innovations on power system communications;    

6.      Describe the fundamentals of electromechanical relays and digital protective relaying 

LEARNING OUTCOMES

A student completing this course is expected to:

1.      Identify and apply different protection schemes applicable to generation, transmission and distribution systems;    

2.      Design protection systems including relay settings and protection coordination;  

3.      Describe the electromechanical relays and digital protective relaying

4.      Give the basic methods of calculating the magnitude and angle of voltage and current for the digital relaying

5.      State the methods of choosing the suitable current transformer, voltage transformer and circuit breakers etc for fulfilling power system protection.

6.      Design an over current protection and its coordination

7.      Design a directional over current protection

8.      Design a differential protection

9.      Design a distance protection