COMMERCIAL FEATURE Protection testing solutions in times of new technologies By Thomas Schossig, who works as a product manager at Omicron Electronics. T he power industry faces many challenges. The continuously increasing complexity of power grids, growing demand, and the need for greater reliability, efficiency and environmental sustainability call for new technologies and solutions. Research institutions, governments and the power industry in numerous regions agree that smart grid technology and the integration of renewable energy resources could be the answer in tackling these challenges. This also applies to Africa, where the discrepancy between the availability of reliable and affordable electricity and anticipated future power demand can be observed. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that Africa’s electricity consumption will reach 1,020 TWh by 2030. Although the continent possesses abundant renewable energy resources, only a small percentage of these are being exploited. According to the World Energy Council (WEC), energy resources in Africa are characterised by gas and oil reserves in north and west Africa, coal in southern Africa, and hydroelectric potential in central and eastern Africa. The basic structure of the power grid, the current power generation infrastructure and power delivery methods have difficulty keeping pace with growing power demand. Considering the continent’s abundance of renewables, it is possible that elements of current and future smart grid concepts, systems and technologies may contribute to the improvement of access to electricity services. The process of adapting future technologies will require an overhaul of the infrastructure and new methods in the power supply system, transmission and distribution. These developments will also challenge existing protection systems which play a key role in the safe and reliable operation of electrical power systems and are relevant for all power system grids. Properly functioning protection devices help to maintain the safety of the system and safeguard ESI AFRICA ISSUE 2 2014 assets from damage, while helping to ensure security of supply. In order to guarantee reliable operation, protection relays must be tested throughout their lifecycle, from their initial development through production and commissioning to periodical maintenance during operation. Taking into account both the importance of testing to ensure reliability and the development of future technologies to improve the grid, the need for easy manual protection testing in a variety of applications is greater today than ever before. Having gained over 25 years’ experience in the field of protection testing, Omicron Electronics – a world leader in this field – is aware of these changes and constantly strives to develop innovative testing solutions. By paying attention to changing market and technological situations and contributing to the work of standardisation bodies and user groups, Omicron’s solutions are up- to-date and future-proof. The new Omicron CMC 310 meets today’s testing requirements, as a portable three-phase test set for basic protection testing and measurement in the field, which is lightweight, compact and reliable. The CMC 310 is designed for fast manual testing, focusing in particular on medium voltages in distribution networks, as well as commissioning, applications in industry and the field of control technology. New ground has been broken with this device, particularly with regard to the range of control choices, as well as the option to extend and upgrade the unit to a higher device class. Smart grid technologies open doors for new testing possibilities and principles: • Integration of distributed energy resources (which results in the change of load flow direction – often the installed base is not dimensioned for this). • Advanced metering and perhaps fault location solutions. • Intelligent and optimised system configuration switching. • Change from fuses to digital protection. Today, an increasing number of small companies are taking over commissioning tasks in the field of protection testing (e.g. renewables). For many commissioning tasks the test set being used must provide the means for perfect ad hoc and manual testing, thus allowing users to react swiftly to constantly changing test requirements and troubleshoot them. During substation commissioning, the CMC 310, for example, allows users to check SCADA annunciations, measurement values, CT/ VT polarity, and wiring. Commissioning engineers working in the field of renewables can also test distributed energy resource (DER) protection schemes with loss of mains (LoM), rate of change of frequency (RoCoF), directional power, inter-tie, and inter- tripping functions. Since the integration of renewables requires a transition from a centralised control architecture to a more distributed and flexible system, and since it must allow bidirectional power flows at the distribution level, new and easy-to- use protection testing solutions at transmission and distribution levels are indispensable. Since the subject of renewables continues to be a major topic in this context, it is necessary that providers of testing solutions are well prepared for smarter and greener grids, by continuously improving and adapting their solutions. ESI ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Thomas Schossig was born in 1970. He received his masters degree in electrical engineering at the Technical University of Ilmenau. 55