Protection coordination — An important task for network security

This paper is dealing with the important task of protection coordination maintaining network security in nationwide power systems under changing network conditions. Existing protection systems have to be analyzed and checked under higher loading and contingency conditions. Adapted protection concepts should be evaluated applied to the network. Nowadays numerical simulation tools like PSS^regSINCAL provide the possibility of a holistic simulation of network and protection behavior. This paper is presenting the results of a protection coordination study based on the proposed method. The collection of protection and network data has been done on the basis of data plausibility algorithms firstly. Numerous different network contingencies were investigated. The software assistance and the visualisation of the enormous amount of output data are described. Generic network and protection configurations leading to maloperation can be clearly found. Further on the possibility of the development of systematic solutions covering the identified practical constraints under the changing network conditions is provided.