Wide area protection and emergency control

This paper discusses wide area protection and emergency control in power system. System-wide disturbances in power systems are a challenging problem for the utility industry because of the large scale and the complexity of the power system. Addition of nonutility generators and independent power producers, an interchange increase, an increasingly competitive environment, and introduction of FACTS devices make the power system more complex to operate and control, and, thus, more vulnerable to a disturbance. The advanced measurement and communication technology in wide area monitoring and control, FACTS devices and new paradigms (fuzzy logic and neural networks) may provide better ways to detect and control an emergency. The proposed panel presentation will include an overview of causes and risks of wide area disturbances, currently used protective relaying schemes to mitigate them.