Interactive Electromagnetic Transients Program for Electrical Engineering Education

An electromagnetic transient analysis program using Dommel´s method [5] has been implemented on a 16-bit microcomputer running under MS-DOS operating system. The program has been mainly tailored for classroom teaching purposes; however, by proper modeling the program can be used to study transient phenomena in practical systems. The program provides tabular display, printer plots, and high resolution graphic plots as output. The interactive feature allows the user to change the network parameters and observe the consequent system response. The program can be used for a range of problems, such as transient response of electrical networks with discrete elements, switching surge calculations, effects of breaker closing resistance and shunt reactor, TRV calculations, and faulted system transients. Any general configuration of resistances, inductances, capacitors, and transmission lines with both current and voltage sources can be studied. A three-phase system is modeled using the corresponding positive sequence equivalent network. This paper describes the salient features of the program and its usage, through a range of examples. The program will assist an engineer or student to understand transient phenomena in power systems conceptually and focus attention on power system modeling using the most appropriate network model for transient analysis.