The Australian Protection Symposium 2008 was an event quite different from typical conferences and symposiums.

While usually people from different parts of a country get together at a single location to discuss a set of issues, in this case the symposium was organized as five one day events that took place in five different locations.

The protection symposium took place from 25 September 2008 to 2 October 2008, in the following cities:

• Sydney
• Melbourne
• Brisbane
• Adelaide
• Perth

A core group of speakers traveled across Australia and was joined by local speakers and participants at each city.

The aim of the Symposium was to support the electrical supply industry by providing a forum highlighting the processes needed to effectively implement a sound protection scheme.

Following the success of the 2007 event, the organizers considered the fact that design and test engineers play complimentary roles in the establishment of effective and reliable protection systems. Often, without having met or on many occasions not having direct communications, they need to have a sound mutual understanding of the principles and application of protection schemes and a clear vision of how a specific application is intended in an area of technology where there are many variables.

The goal was to focus the details and different aspects of a specific protection subject. As a result the theme of the symposium was “Protection - The Complete Story: From Design to Testing and Assessment with a focus on Differential Protection”.

With this focus the Australian Protection Symposium provided an opportunity for people involved in this process to share knowledge and experience and reinforce the effectiveness of this mutual interaction on all aspects of Differential Protection Schemes.

• The different topics discussed at the symposium were:
• Critical Aspects of Designing a Differential Protection System
• Critical Aspects of Testing a Differential Protection System from a Design View
• Reviewing the Approach to Testing Digital Differential Relays
• Practical Steps in Testing Differential Protection Devices
• Using Advanced Testing Techniques of Network Simulation to Support Design Criteria
• Role of Current Transformers in Differential Protect ion Applications
• Techniques for End to End Testing of Line Differential Applications
• Functional Testing of IEC 61850 Based Protection Relays
• Techniques for Controlling the Creation, Communication, Application and Storage of Settings and Test Results.

Open forums at the conclusion of the morning and afternoon sessions provided a way for all attendees to clarify issues and share experiences.

Considering the impact of IEC 61850 on protection applications and their testing, the last session of the day included demonstrations of different tools that can help protection specialists understand, monitor, configure and test multifunctional protection IEDs with IEC 61850 capabilities.