Power System Protection

Protective relaying is a critical aspect of the electric power grid to provide safe and reliable operation.  Sandia is working to improve power system protection to make it faster and more accurate by developing novel cutting-edge protection techniques. 

  • Fault testing of inverters in Sandia’s DETL facility
  • Electromagnetic Transient (EMT) simulation and models of inverter-based resources (IBR)
  • Advanced microgrid protection schemes for AC, DC, hybrid, and networked microgrids
  • Fault location schemes for systems with high IBR penetration
  • Hardware-in-the-loop testing with commercial relays
  • Cybersecurity of protection relays
  • Development of protection algorithms into ADMS
  • Incipient failure detection
  • Co-optimization of power electronics design/controls with protection
  • Protection of low-voltage secondary networks
  • Traveling wave and very high frequency protection
  • Wildfire ignition prevention
  • Incorporating machine learning and artificial intelligence into relays
  • Developing, validating, and demonstrating highly reconfigurable communication-based protection schemes, including Adaptive Protection

Contact

Dr. Matthew Reno

mjreno@sandia.gov

Power system protection charts and graphs