Friday Nov 16, 2018 at 9:30 a.m. Dr. Ali Hooshyar, Editor of IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery & IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, will be presenting “Next-Generation Protection Technologies for Power Systems: The Quest for Resilience”.
Day & Time: Friday November 16th, 2018
9:30 a.m. ‐ 11:00 a.m.
Speaker: Dr. Ali Hooshyar
Editor of IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid
Organizers: IEEE Toronto Systems Chapter
Location: Ryerson University, Department of Computer Science, Room 288
George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre
245 Church Street,
Toronto, ON – M5B 2K3
Contact: Mehrdad Tirandazian
Abstract: The resilience of power systems is known as their ability to predict, adapt to and quickly recover from various disruptive events. Power grids have always been subject to such events, but in the last few years, the frequency and severity of large-scale disruptions have increased due to the growing number of major climate disasters. In addition, the increasing reliance on the cyber layer of smart grids has diversified the causes of major disruptions. Attackers can exploit the grid’s cyber vulnerabilities to manipulate protection and control commands, as was the case with the 2015 and 2016 blackouts in Ukraine. These recent developments have intensified the efforts to improve grid resilience. Large-scale disruptions usually involve abnormal currents and voltages—to which the protection system of the grid is expected to respond—, or involve trip commands to circuit breakers, which can originate from protective devices. Furthermore, some of the strategies to increase grid resilience alter the short-circuit behavior of the grid. As a result, substantial upgrades in the protection system are necessary to meet the demands for higher grid resilience. This talk will highlight some of the major changes required to prevent large-scale disruptive events or improve the grid operation during such events. Various protection system challenges that the speaker has unveiled are discussed, followed by the proposed solutions. Two of these challenges are elaborated in detail: first, this talk focuses on the relation between grid resilience and protection of microgrids, which can ensure the continuity of power supply during major disruptions in the transmission system. The performance of existing commercial relays for microgrid protection is demonstrated, and the requirements to eliminate the shortcomings of these relays are identified. Afterwards, this talk shows how cyber-attacks on communication-assisted protection schemes can lead to wide-area disruptions throughout the grid. The vulnerabilities of such schemes and a new approach to address them are discussed.
Biography: Ali Hooshyar received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Waterloo in 2014. He joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto in 2018. He was with the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, York University, Toronto, from 2015 to 2018. His research interests include protection and control of renewable energy systems and smart grids. Dr. Hooshyar is an Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery and the IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid.