Intelligent system for detecting “hidden” errors in protection settings

Due to many developments taking place within the electricity supply industry, the network and its operation has grown ever more in recent years, which brings significant challenges for power system protection engineers. Apart from the significant efforts that are required to ensure that the protection setting process is effective, work also needs to be carried out to check the validity of the settings after initial calculation and application. However, solely relying on personnel and procedures to assess the validity of the protection relay setting files may occasionally result in a hidden error (or errors) remaining undetected until an in-service mal-operation event is experienced. This may bring significant consequences, in terms of economic costs, potential safety hazards and damage to the reputation of the utility company. This paper will present the initial research of making use of artificial intelligence technology (expert system) to help protection engineers validate the protection settings. Existing expert systems for protection settings applications will be reviewed and a new intelligent system that can open a setting file and interrogate the protection functions and settings in the file will be introduced. The advantages of this novel intelligent tool over existing protection setting expert systems will be discussed.