Virtual Laboratory Development for Teaching Power Systems via Interactive Experiment Environment

The creation and testing of computer-simulated interactive environment laboratory for use in the power systems field education will provide a highly interactive and powerful learning environment for all undergraduate power engineering students. This experiment will prepare students to approach their practical with more confidence and to better understand the theory in the class room. The study of electrical power systems requires a solid background on advanced mathematics, but many engineering students lack this required background. Using this tool, undergraduate students may improve their performance. MATLAB, particularly its Graphical User Interface (GUI)software has been used to design the interactive environment to calculate the fault currents and voltages that occur for different types of fault on the power systems transmission line. The manipulation on the internal connection of the power system components are the main focus. This paper describes the design of an interactive environment experiment for studying power systems fault analysis and the program will make the practical experiments in power engineering more attractive and understandable to undergraduate students.