Protection design and management using global resources

The wave of economic rationalism has not spared the international electricity supply communities. Business redefinition, organisational restructuring, process re-engineering, downsizing, privatisation and the outsourcing of services have become commonplace in electrical utility undertakings. One result of this has been the dispersion of so called “specialist engineers” such as protection engineers from within the ranks of utility organisations out into the broader marketplace with some specialisations lost locally in the process. These changes, in many situations, also cut off the source of specialist utility-based protection training programmes. Modern digital protection relays incorporate comprehensive functionality and programmable application options that, to be appropriately applied within the electrical network, often requires intimate knowledge of the product as well as the protection application expertise and the specific network configuration. In the resource-constrained environment a pursuit of added values through sophisticated modifications may be discouraged by the extra effort required to confidently customise relays. In this environment a protection design resourcing concept whereby “global” resources are contracted and managed to provide best practice solutions has been proven to work well. The concept is underpinned by the theory that the best knowledge of various aspects of protection application is held by different groups of specialists