Development of a protection scheme board for practical lab studies in CEDAT.

Abstract

Power system protection is oriented around protecting electrical power systems from faults within the network by isolating the faulted components/sections to leave as much of the remaining sections of the electrical network operational as possible hereby reducing the occurrence of system damage or failure. It is therefore essential for power systems engineers to understand the concepts and practices underlying power protection using practical laboratory studies. The studies are designed to equip students with skills requiring them to directly apply theory learned in lectures to protection devices found in the laboratory.

This project report presents the creation of a customized scheme circuit board for power system protection and co-ordination laboratory studies, a course module pursued by fourth year Electrical engineering students at College of Engineering, Design, Art and Technology (CEDAT), Makerere University. The purpose of this project was to enable the students use software to simulate an electrical network, set and co-ordinate protection equipment, test their operations in contingency cases and observe the output characteristics on the simulated network. This hereby facilitates research around protection of power systems particularly focusing on the over-current protection scheme.