Power System Blackouts, Restoration and Troubleshooting Course

Course Overview:

The course seeks to equip planners, designers, and operators of electric systems with modern concepts and approaches needed to address contemporary issues such as competition, open access as well as new technologies in power system planning.

Participants will learn strategies to enhance the quality of power supply and accrual measures aimed at avoiding multiple cascading blackouts. 

Topics include causes of blackouts and their preventative measures, transfer limit analysis and building criteria for a dependable grid system. 

Through case studies and a plethora of practical examples, the course is aimed at novice and experienced electrical engineers working in the operations, planning, maintenance, and protection of electric networks.

Course Objectives:

• To provide electric system planners, designers and operators with concepts, tools and methodologies essential to address modern-day issues of competition, open access, wheeling and new technology in system planning
• How to improve the quality of supply in A.C power system
• Necessary steps to prevent cascading blackouts

Who Should Attend?

This course is intended for junior & senior electrical engineers working in operation, planning maintenance, protection, control, and analysis of utilities & industrial electrical networks.

Course Outlines:

Blackout Causes Overview

• Voltage instability initiating blackouts
• Induction motors role in triggering a blackout
• Cold rush current effects on blackout
• Blackout prevention by general & network voltage control
• Blackout prevention by loads voltage stabilization
• Example

Blackout Preventive Measures

• How and why the blackout begins

• Causes of the blackout and violations of standards.
• Under-frequency and under-voltage load shedding
• Example

Planning Criteria and Reliable Operation of Power Grid 

• Reliability organizations
• Key parties in the pre-cascade phase
• Review of international practice
• Representing reliability measures and customer costs
• Application examples (U.S and Jordan Blackout)
• Contingency analysis
• Ranking and screening methods
• Defining a study area
• Handling divergence, islanding, relying on events
• Measuring customer impact

Transfer Limit Analysis

• Thermal and voltage limits
• Defining transfer conditions
• PV curses for normal and contingency condition
• Transient stability
• Example