Practical implementation of wide area disturbance protection and restoration schemes

This paper presents practical implementation of wide area disturbance protection and restoration schemes. Congestion management, balancing of load and on-line generation, maintaining spinning reserve capacity margins, and managing reactive power support through reliable real-time data are some of the elements of successful power system operation. To detect and take preventive/protective actions for these conditions, a class of protection schemes known as special protection systems (SPS), also referred to as remedial action schemes (RAS), are developed to address system wide operating conditions. Reactive power flow analysis, including mitigation of voltage instability, should become an integral part of planning and operating studies and have been mandated in the recent North American Electric reliability (NERC) recommendations for prevention and mitigation of future blackout scenarios.