A model based technique for the comprehensive validation of power system protection operation

Following a disturbance on the power network, protection engineers are required to determine if the protection schemes operated correctly. To aid protection engineers in this task, they have access to supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system data and fault recorder data. This paper reports on a decision support system (DSS) for protection engineers which will automatically analyse this data to provide a comprehensive report on the protection scheme operation. The DSS comprises of two knowledge based systems which interpret the SCADA system data and a model based diagnosis module that can utilise both SCADA system data and fault recorder data. This paper concentrates in particular on the model based aspect, which provides the comprehensive analysis of the protection scheme operations. A case study is presented demonstrating the depth of diagnosis possible