Centre for Substation Automation and Energy m anagement Systems (CSAE m S)

The CSAEMS team members are Prof R Tzoneva, Mr C Kriger, Adj Prof A Apostolov, Adj Prof P Petev, Mr S Behardien, Mr M Mnguni, Dr S Krishnamurthy and Mr C Gumede.

The centre seeks to contribute to addressing the need in South Africa for research infrastructure development that supports human capital development and research and innovation in the field of metering, monitoring, protection, automation and control of power systems, paying particular attention to current and emerging standards in the field.

Core activities concentrate on contributions to the theory and practice of substation automation and energy management systems, as follows:

• Interpretation, modelling and implementation of the IEC61850 standard functions

• Development of innovative protection schemes for different applications

• Real-time simulation and innovative solutions of energy management systems

• Development of test-bench facilities for testing of ideas, project solutions, and new developments in the field of power systems

• Training and knowledge transfer by equipment orientated courses, yearly industrial seminars on IEC61850, and organisation of the biannual PAC World Africa international conference

Highlights for 2014

1. achievements in research, development and applications of the IeC 61850 standard and technology include:

• Innovative PC implementation of the IEC61850-9-2 standard-based Merging Unit; working prototype of the first phase of development of the Process Interface Device on an FPGA platform

• Innovative protection schemes for different applications: A strategy for comparison of the performance of sampled values and conventional CTs and VTs based protection schemes; test benches for bus bar protection and distribution automation based on the IEC61850 standard.

• New developments in energy management systems research for power system stability assessment and control; new methods, algorithms and software for parallel solution of multiarea dispatch problems; new control strategies for grid connected and out of grid inverter-based renewable energy systems; and neural network models for development of IEC61850 standard logical nodes for condition monitoring of electrical motors.

2. Postgraduate research project clusters include:

• Interpretation of the IEC61850 standard, and software application development utilising embedded development kits

• Power system protection using GOOSE messaging

• Real-time simulation and energy management systems strategies

3. Collaboration and joint work with universities and industry was extended as indicated below.

• Alstom UK donated two analog merging units capable of publishing sampled value messages and two protection intelligent electronic devices capable of accepting these messages; this equipment led to the centre doing research on the front line of the Smart grid development.

• Two MSc students from UCT used the RTDS for their projects; the RTDS was used for the undergraduate and BTech courses in Distribution and Protection by Dr S Krishnamurthy.

• Mr C Kriger, Mr C Gumede and Prof R Tzoneva presented the reports on their TESP projects in the Eskom TESP report back meeting.

• The first three-year phase of the THRIP project was successfully completed

• A group of delegates of the Distributech Africa Conference visited the CSAEMS; the centre’s activities were presented and demonstrations of the postgraduate projects results were done.

4. The following postgraduate students completed their studies in 2014: Mr F Julie, Mr E Luwaca and Mr G Deivakkannu.

5. funding for 2014 includes:

• Industrial partners THRIP programme: Alectrix – R1 300 000

• Industrial partner THRIP programme: MBSA – R 10 000

• NRF THRIP programme – R2 620 000

• Eskom TESP programme – R300 000

• URF for Dr Krishnamurthy – R52 886