Conference Reports News

Georgia Tech Protective Relaying Conference

After a pause in 2020 due to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting restrictions in travel for the members of the PAC community, the 74th Annual Georgia Tech Protective Relaying Conference was held during 28-30 April 2021 as  a Virtual event using the Hopin Online Events Platform.

The program included multiple papers on traditional protection topics, as well as presentations considering the needs and methods for addressing the challenges of the changing behavior of the electric power grids resulting from inverter-based generators.  

In the middle of the second day was the Keynote presentation on “HEMP/IEMI and EMC Protection for Control House Electronics” by William Radasky, Metatech Corporation. Also Prof. Sakis Meliopoulos announced that for the first time the authors of two papers received the 2019 Walter A. Elmore Best Paper Award – Jeff Brogdan, Sadel Fetic, Addis Kifle for their paper “Analysis of Microprocessor Relay Response on Surge Arrester Protection Schemes” and Stephen Craven, Ha Vo, Tuan Tran, Gary Kobet for “Packet-Based Teleprotection Design and Testing.”

The conference finished with the Real-World Experiences session which provided a forum for short presentations on “real life” experiences. Presenters shared protection related events in areas of operations, lessons learned, best practices and/or information on unique events. Prof. Sakis Meliopoulos announced that for the first time the authors of two papers received the 2019 Walter A. Elmore Best Paper Award.