P37.103: Protection and Control

Evaluation of Broken Conductor Detection Technologies on High-Voltage Transmission Lines. Transmission line conductors may break and fall due to material aging, hardware failure, severe weather, and other factors. If not detected promptly, an energized broken conductor can lead to ground faults, high-temperature arcing, and potential wildfires, posing significant public safety risks. This research explores practical technologies and methods for detecting broken conductors on high-voltage transmission lines. Modern protective relays can detect broken conductors using methods such as transmission line charging current measurement, imbalance current criteria, and purpose-built logic. A testbed system at the EPRI P&C lab evaluates the effectiveness of these technologies, providing insights and practical guidance for mitigating wildfire risks.

Evaluation of Protective Relay Performance Under Power Swings: Lab Testing and Research Findings. Power swings can cause unwanted operations of protective relays, compromising power system reliability. The NERC PRC-026 standard mandates actions to prevent transmission protection misoperation during stable power swings in non-fault conditions. This research evaluates the performance of transmission protective relays during stable and unstable power swings through simulations and extensive lab testing. The findings provide insights into power swing dynamics, detection and blocking technologies, and the impacts on transmission protection relays, assisting utilities in improving protection system reliability.

Life-Cycle Management of Relay Settings: Configuration Management Guidelines and Effective Practices. Managing the consistency, conformance, and accuracy of large volumes of relay settings is challenging for utilities. This research addresses these challenges through configuration management (CM) guidelines and effective practices. A well-established CM system ensures systematic identification, approval, verification, and recording of relay settings throughout their life cycle.

Application Guide for Relay Firmware Change Management. Relay firmware changes can impact many components within a protection and control system. This research develops an application guide for utilities to manage relay firmware changes effectively, ensuring that changes are reviewed, documented, approved, and verified according to CM principles.

Life-Cycle Management of Relay Settings: Tools Assessment. Traditional tools for creating and managing relay settings have resulted in disconnected data repositories, applications, and environments. Stakeholders across a utility organization increasingly need to inquire about and exchange accurate setting information to support engineering, planning, field service, and compliance tasks. This research assesses commercially available software tools to provide a single source of truth for managing relay settings and to automate data exchange, verification, and documentation.

Application Guidelines for Protection System Maintenance. The reliability of protection and control systems depends on well-established asset maintenance programs. Utilities today face challenges such as difficulty in scheduling outages, stretched resources, and the growing complexity of relay technologies. This research evaluates new monitoring technologies and advances condition-based maintenance (CBM) programs. The research results may provide utilities with application guidance that can be used in engineering and design specifications to create effective CBM programs and reduce the costs associated with time-based maintenance (TBM) programs. The benefits of combining CBM and TBM in maintenance programs include reducing the cost and outage duration of TBM, expanding maintenance intervals based on NERC PRC-005, detecting hidden failures promptly, and triggering maintenance actions only when truly needed.

Technology Transfer Workshop: IEC 61850 Standard and New P&C Designs: The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 61850 standard facilitates substation automation and enables equipment interoperability through a common data format. There is growing interest from utilities to explore the IEC 61850 standard and associated digital substation technologies for advancing new P&C designs that promise to improve safety and reliability, reduce costs, enable interoperability and condition monitoring, and strengthen grid resiliency.

The technology transfer workshop plans to provide members with knowledge preparation and new insights on:

• IEC 61850 standard and digital substation architectures
• New technologies for resilient communication networks
• New P&C applications using the Generic Object-Oriented Substation Event (GOOSE) message
• Emerging process bus technologies and new P&C applications using sampled value
• New technologies and industry standards for precision time synchronization

The workshop, held in collaboration with relevant EPRI research programs and industry stakeholders, aims to keep members abreast of the latest technologies and industry standards, provide a forum for members to share success stories and lessons learned, and prepare members for field deployment through EPRI technology transfer.