Design and implementation of a real-time training environment for protective relay

This paper presents our work involving the development of a real-time operator training system using a protective relay implemented by the user defined component (UDC) model of a Real-Time Digital Simulator (RTDS). Operator training, within a real-time environment for the principles and behavior of protective relaying with respect to power system stability and protection, can provide a very strong benefit in facilitating operators’ understanding of the basic concepts of a protective relay as well as handing undesirable operations. The operator training system includes (a) RTDS hardware, (b) a mimic board that has detailed state information of a simple two-area system with an electronically display, (c) a control panel so that the user can apply a disturbance to the system (i.e., fault, load shedding, etc.), and (d) a generator protective relay model. The relay model using a UDC, which is designed to facilitate the investigation and evaluation of the protective relay, is based on integrating six functions into a single model. The testing of the relay model described in this paper is summarized into three steps: static, dynamic and advanced testing methods. The simulation results of these tests show that the developed relay model using the UDC operates correctly for the various events. We also discuss the utilization of an operator training system via simple application examples.