The IX Technical Seminar on Protection and Control was held 1 - 5 June 2008 at Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The host city is the third largest in Brazil and the capital of the state of Minas Gerais. It is surrounded by the Serra do Curral Mountains, which serve as a natural backdrop. The convention center is part of the life and history of the city of Belo Horizonte. Minascentro was created to be a meeting place for the arts, culture, industry, commerce, tourism and science.

The Seminar's mission is to be one of the main venues of the national electric sector for debates and the exchange of experiences in matters related to local protection and control of power electric systems, allowing a technical-scientific interchange between energy concessionaries, manufacturers, universities, consulting companies and research entities, through the presentation of technical papers by national and international experts alike.

It is intended for professionals in such areas as design, implementation , studies , operations as well as professionals from other areas working with local protection and control of generation systems, transmission and distribution of electric energy, providers of equipment and services of local protection and control systems.

Professors, researchers , university and research center students, professionals working in governmental and regulatory bodies and in other agencies involved with the subject participated in the seminar.

A special session featuring Distinguished Invited Speakers allowed the attendees to learn from leading world experts about the trends and future of our industry.

The participants in the Seminar presented and discussed many issues of great importance to the protection, automation and control industry, such as:

• Impact of distributed generation
• Evaluation of protection and control systems performance Reliability
• Commissioning, certification and applications of the IEC 61850 Standard
• Disturbance analysis
• Integration of new players: protection, control, and supervision responsibilities and requirements.
• Synchronized Phasor measurement applications
• Special Protection Systems
• Protection systems settings, management, commissioning and maintenance
• New principles of protection and control
• Generator protection