ICT enabled high voltage laboratory: Cost effective tool for engineering education

Growing demand for use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in ¿technology for all¿ concept has been attracted the attention of all academician and engineers to develop an ICT enabled system for each and every field. In the field of education, ICT enabled high voltage (HV) laboratory is an effective educational tool for all of the institutes those offer Electrical and Electronic Engineering programs at undergraduate and post graduate levels. The students can access and familiarize themselves with operations of such facilities for conducting the laboratory experiments and for testing high voltage power apparatus by local area network (LAN) as well as through internet. At present more than thousand colleges provide engineering education in India. Approximately half of them offer undergraduate programs in Electrical and Electronic Engineering that include HV Engineering. It is mandatory as per the guidelines of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) that the laboratory facilities are to be provided for the programs which are offered by the colleges. However, very few colleges have HV laboratory facilities due to the involvement of huge costs. A way to address this deficiency, the concept of cost effective HV virtual laboratory (HVVL) and ICT enabled remote HV laboratory (ICTRHVL) are introduced for engineering education at National Institute of Technology (NIT), Durgapur. In this paper, the HVVL and ICTRHVL modules are described where students familiarize themselves with the HV power apparatus, testing equipment as well as with testing of HV power apparatus.