Energy Seminar: Impact of Renewables on System Protection

Speaker: Assoc. Prof. Dr. İlhan Koçar

Title: Impact of Renewables on System Protection

Date/Time: July 12th Thursday, 13:30

Place: FENS G025

 

Abstract: The penetration of renewable energy resources has been continuously increasing during the recent years, resulting in technical challenges for the utility and Independent System Operator (ISO) engineers as they attempt to integrate the new technologies. A major challenge faced by protection and planning engineers is the impact of increased renewable penetration on system protection. The power electronics associated with converter interfaced wind turbine generators (WTGs) and photovoltaic (PV) inverters can produce current waveform signatures that are significantly different from those of traditional synchronous or asynchronous generators. Traditional short-circuit modeling techniques often do not accurately represent the behavior of renewable energy resources during short-circuit events, and accurate short-circuit models of renewable energy resources are not available. Consequently, protection and system planning engineers are required to use approximate models and make judgments based on limited information about the behavior of these devices during short-circuit events. The primary objective of this presented research project is to provide an improved understanding of the way these devices affect system protection through the development of accurate short-circuit models that can be used in system studies to evaluate the impact of renewable energy resources on system protection.

The speaker has about 15 years of experience in the development of concepts, models and methods for the analysis and simulation of power systems from steady state to electromagnetic transients. His research work has visible outcomes, and his solutions support thousands of practicing engineers as of today. The talk will be focused on the impact of renewables on system protection but the efforts on model development and validation will also be summarized.

Bio: İlhan Koçar received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from École Polytechnique de Montréal affiliated to Université de Montréal in 2009. He worked as a Project Engineer at Aselsan Electronics Inc. for 6 years (1998-2004). He worked as an R&D Engineer at CYME International T&D (formerly part of Cooper Power Systems) for 2 years (2009-2011). He joined the faculty of electrical engineering at Polytechnique Montreal in 2011. He works in close collaboration with electric utilities, research institutes and power system tool developers. He is a registered engineer in the province of Quebec and a senior member of IEEE.

İlhan’s career highlights include contributions to industrial grade software products, development of solver prototypes and modeling of renewables, transmission lines and cables to study power system phenomena at the entire frequency spectrum of interest. He has performed many grid consulting projects that cover design, modeling, analysis and validation of field measurements.

 

Contact: Murat Kaya