Description:

The electric utility grid is rapidly changing, with the penetration of renewable energy resources such as wind and solar (PV) being the most noticeable. With the World Wind Energy Association estimating that worldwide, wind generation capacity is at approximately 597 GW, with around 50 GW capacity added in 2018.

Solar (PV) generation deployments take place at both the transmission and distribution levels. By the end of 2018, global solar generation capacity was estimated at 405 GW, with around 100 GW added in 2018. Utility scale solar installations account for 60% of solar capacity.

These developments, combined with retirement of conventional generation sources, lead to several unique challenges for protection and control engineers in ensuring the safe and reliable operation of the grid – overall decrease in fault current levels, changes to the types of fault current contributions to fault locations, and decrease in system inertia due to loss of rotating machine generation, to name some. The accurate characterization of the renewable resource behavior in short-circuit programs is a challenge as well.

In this panel discussion, industry experts will explore these problems in more detail and suggest solutions that are being proposed and developed by the industry.

Panelists from research institutes, distribution and transmission utilities, and consulting providers will describe their experience in maintaining reliable protection systems in an electric grid with increasing renewable energy deployment.

Further, Evangelos Farantatos of the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) will describe the status of a joint effort by EPRI, IEEE PES and software vendors in developing a standardized model for representing inverter-based resources in short-circuit programs.

Discussion Topics:

-- The renewables-driven changes to the electric grid
-- Impact on fundamental protection practices for transmission and distribution systems
-- Industry solutions and best practices for transmission and distribution systems
-- Simulation and visualization as a means to elucidate problems and develop solutions
-- Questions and Answers with global industry experts