Adaptive dependable and secure protection systems for electric power systems

This paper proposes a new philosophy on protection systems in bulk electric power systems. Traditional protection systems are non-adaptive and have been usually applied with bias towards dependability, one of the two considerations on designing electric grid protection systems (the other one is security). The art and science of protection and control of tomorrow drives the power system professionals to design and implement schemes that are adaptive and aim towards security. It is important to minimize system exposures when the power system is in a stressed state or in early stages of a sequence of events to halt or mitigate disturbance propagation. One of the leading contributions to the future of grid protection would be to avoid incorrect tripping of unaffected equipment therefore maintaining the power system integrity. In addition, with the ever-increasing load demand and the advent of the deregulated power market recently, power systems are pushed more often to operate close to design limits and with more uncertainty of the system operating mode. The proposed protection systems offer adaptive concepts by adjusting the need for more dependability or security as applicable, through the application of fuzzy logic and based on a set of real-time factors, such as system state index, nodal price, and equipment outage impact index. Results from our work can be used as a roadmap for further enhancement leading to the introduction of algorithms in commercial products.