Use new technologies to address the challenge of diminishing staff and experience

The methods and tools described above are also valuable as training tools.

1. Detailed models of protective relays in a master library can help counter the burden of learning relay details the hard way, particularly when the model is documented. This serves as a knowledge base when consulting an expert is not an option.
2. Simulating the whole protection system is analogous to using a flight simulator - a safe environment for engineering training, and for studying the effect of relay settings on wide-area coordination.
3. Stored and properly documented setting techniques can speed the setting and documenting processes, and also serve as a teaching tool for younger engineers. We aren't advocating this training technique as a replacement for the resident expert but as a supplement and a backup for when there is no expert.
4. A common database environment can unify and coordinate the management of settings to a useful degree without needing to replace the multi-vendor setting software communication environments - an unrealistic objective in a competitive world.
5. The application of advanced computer methods, not only to protection but throughout power system engineering, can attract prospective engineers to our profession from a generation already enamored of computer technology.

Implement changes in data administration

Software can't provide the incentive for organizations to cooperate, but it can make the mechanics of cooperation easier. We discuss here some of the advantages that might be gained by sharing both network and protection data within different groups in a company and among companies.

1. Data must be maintained by those who use it and who know the system best, but data could be stored, shared, and kept secure at a higher level than the individual groups or their companies. Multi-user database management systems are common and must not be viewed as a constraint. Techniques are in use now that support a nearly unlimited mixture of construction scenarios, generation levels, and alternative network configurations. Database merge facilities exist. What is lacking is centralized data storage and sharing. Formalizing higher level storage and sharing won't lead to fewer personnel; in fact, there may be more of a need for engineering specialists, but it should lessen user tolerance for marginally adequate network models and overcome the poor quality neighbor models that are common today. It would also provide one path for sharing power flow data with the protection engineers. To the credit of the utilities involved, there are a number of less formal initiatives now underway to share short-circuit network models among the participants. (Planning groups have done this for years.)
2. Share protection system models with planning groups whose transient stability (TS) and electromagnetic transient studies would benefit from realistic representation of that system. Existing TS programs have only rudimentary models of a few relays, whereas direct links between the protection system model and the TS time-domain model could lead to important insights. We also think this would be a positive step toward increasing awareness of likely protection system response in operations centers, the lack of which has played a role in some blackouts.
3. Share protection models with Operations departments using a link from the SCADA system to obtain actual network conditions and a link to the SCADA interface to warn of the threat of load-induced misoperations, to monitor protection system performance, and to facilitate rapid fault locating thereby minimizing repair and down time.