The 9th International Conference on Developments in Power System Protection was held from 17 - 20 March 2008 in Glasgow, Scotland, UK. This is the largest specialized protection conference in Europe that is held at three or four years intervals at different locations.
The conference venue was the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Glasgow. This is Scotland's largest city with a population of 600,000. It is the commercial capital of Scotland and one of Europe's top 20 financial centers. The hotel overlooks the River Clyde and is located next to the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre (SECC) and opposite the Glasgow Science Centre.
A one day tutorial on IEC 61850 and its application to protection systems was presented by some of the leading industry experts with the idea to improve the attendees understanding of the standard and help them in its successful implementation in different projects.
The conference started with two keynote addresses:
Trends in Protection and Substation Automation Systems and Feed-backs from CIGRE activities was delivered by Ivan de Mesmaeker, Chairman of Study Committee B5 of CIGRE. He addressed the main important issues regarding protection and substation automation systems: the possible level of integration, the standardization aspects and the impact of IEC 61850, the information technology and the overall system protection scheme.
The second keynote speaker was Javier Amantegui, Protection Manager of Iberdrola and talked about the challenges and opportunities faced by utilities using modern protection and control systems.
The papers selected by the conference organizing committee ranged from research concepts and ideas to technical issues and industrial applications.
The papers belonged to the following main categories:
The papers were presented in three forms:
A dedicated exhibition ran in parallel to the DPSP 2008 conference, covering a range of products and services.
The Conference Dinner was held at the prestigious Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, one of Scotland's most popular tourist attractions.
