Smart Grid Labs

IEEE Joint Technical Committee Meeting report

by Bill Moncrief, Principal Consultant

I recently attended the IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES) meeting in Anaheim, California.  This Winter Meeting was once a general meeting, but is now a meeting of the committees and does not offer any papers, panel sessions, or other things that we often associate with IEEE meetings.

The majority of my time was devoted to the Power Quality portion of the IEEE PES.  I am the chair of the Standard Coordinating Committee 22 (SCC22), the group that coordinates the different societies in developing IEEE standards that relate to Power Quality.  At this meeting, we discovered that the IEEE Electromagnetic Coordination committee had developed a pair of standards that limited waveform distortion, or harmonics, on single-phase loads.  Standard 1836 limits the harmonics related to loads less than 16 amps, and standard 1837 limits harmonics for loads greater than 16 amps.   These standards were developed very quickly because the committee chose to accept the European IEC standards that serve the same purpose.  The Canadian members had approached my group to accept those standards, and we rejected the suggestion because the manufacturers and utilities don’t want the limits imposed.  Taking the effort to a different committee was shopping for a sponsor, and the SCC organization is the way that efforts such as that are held in check.  SCC22 is now involved and will encourage power companies and other manufacturers to get involved in the process.

In addition to the day and a half of Power Quality meetings, we had the opportunity to discuss other transmission and distribution subjects, substation problems and designs, power system relaying changes and power systems communications opportunities.  As at most of these types of meetings, there is much to cover and the sessions overlap quite a lot.  My assignments in Power Quality kept me busy for the first day and a half, but I did manage to attend the Distribution Reliability meeting.  There was a paper presented by a utility noting that they had improved the way they count occurrences and were working to improve reliability.  Adding sensors to their system was leading to faster restoration times because the repair crews could be dispatched more directly than before.  That wasn’t a surprise, but the audience appreciates some evidence that it really does work.  Adding sensors and improving the overview of the system does indeed make problem resolution faster and less expensive.

I wasn’t able to attend the Relay group’s meeting on the Use of Synchrophasor Measurements in Protection Applications.  The synchrophasors being installed as part of the Smart Grid “upgrade” of the transmission system give operators a wide area view of the condition of the system and are something that we have seen in simulations but have not actually experience before the last few years.  Now, with the speed of the measurements and the fast communications systems, the operators have a new tool for watching the condition of the system.  The Relay Committee is looking at the results and the opportunities to automatically make decisions that would stop cascading outages and other system disasters before they start.