Protection Systems that verify and supervise themselves

This paper highlights some important design aspects that a Protection and Control system should have when applied to protecting a Smart Grid or Smart Transmission & Distribution Substation. These aspects are aimed at de-risking the designs and, at the same time, reducing overall project cost. The electricity industries of many countries currently only put equipment into service following thorough design checks and detailed site commissioning using highly skilled engineering personnel. Such a thorough and detailed approach increases the overall cost of a project. Although best endeavors are made to identify and resolve all errors at the design and site commissioning stages, it is often not practicable to eliminate them all. This situation triggers a need for designs to be of such a nature that those errors, which may have slipped through during the site commissioning, get automatically detected prior to equipment operating on the live system.