Wide Area Monitoring, Protection and Control: Requirements and Applications in Power System Protection

Due to the large scale network complexities, system wide disturbances in power systems are a challenging issue for the power industry. When a major power system disturbance occurs, protection and control actions are required to stop the degradation of the system and restore to a normal state thereby minimizing the impact of the disturbance. Improvements in planning and operation of the grid could be achieved by Wide Area Monitoring, Protection and Control (WAMPAC) Applications. The purpose of wide area monitoring system is to monitor, assess, enable and automatically take necessary action to mitigate the harmful effects due to disturbances or faults in the system. This paper discusses in details WAMPAC. The present work also gives an overview of the Phasor Measurement technology and it benefits, requirements and applications for WAMPAC strategies.