by Dr. Murty V.V.S. Yalla, Beckwith Electric, USA
PES Power System Relaying and Control (PSRC) Committee is responsible for the development of standards, guides and reports covering different aspects of protection and control of electric power systems.
It has been an honor to be associated with PSRC committee for the past 31 years and serve as a chair for the past 2 years. My term as a chair of the PSRC committee will end on Dec 31, 2022, and I will assume the role of the past chair. I would like to thank all the past chairs who provided needed mentorship and guidance during the past 6 years. It has been a pleasure working with present officers and subcommittee chairs. Congratulations and best wishes for the new officers of the PSRC committee for the term Jan 2023- Dec 2024.
Chair: Michael Thompson,
Vice Chair: Gene Henneberg
Secretary: Jim Niemira, Standards Coordinator: Don Lukach
PSRC committee is one of the 17 technical committees under the IEEE PES. The scope of the PSRC committee includes principles, application, design, construction, testing, and operation of power system protection and control.
Administratively the committee is run by officers who oversee the activities of various subcommittees (System protection, Line protection, Communications and control, Protection and control practices, Rotating machinery protection, and Substation protection). PSRC committee officers report to PES Technical Council whose membership includes chairs of all 17 PES technical committees and 4 coordinating committees.
PSRC committee meets three time per year in January, May, and September at various locations. In addition to generating reports, PSRC committee is responsible for developing and maintaining more than 60 IEEE Standards (including guides and recommended practice documents). The PSRC committee has been in existence for more than 75 years and produced some of the most widely used IEEE standards.
As the electric power grid is undergoing transformation with high penetration of Inverter Based Resources (IBRs) traditional protection design methodologies may not provide proper protection due to various reasons including reduction in fault current levels.
Several working groups in PSRC committee produced reports and standards addressing protection problems associated with high penetration of IBRs. As an example, PSRC committee was involved in a joint committee work related to IEEE 2800 “Standard for Interconnection and Interoperability of Inverter-Based Resources (IBRs) Interconnecting with Associated Transmission Electric Power Systems” which was published on April 22, 2022. PSRC committee is also starting a joint committee work with SCC21 and other PES Technical committees to revise IEEE Standard 1547-2018. A guide addressing microgrid protection P2030.12 “Guide for the Design of Microgrid Protection Systems” is under development.
More information on the activities of the PSRC committee are available at https://www.pes-psrc.org/
The “Knowledge Base” section of the website contains some of the important reports published by PSRC committee during the past three decades.
The September meeting of the PSRC committee was held jointly with Power System Communications and Cybersecurity (PSCC) committee from Sep 12-15, 2022, in Nashville, TN. The meeting was well attended with 154 attending in-person along with 174 attending virtually. The meeting registrants came from 15 countries: Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, France, Germany, India, Ireland Japan, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, Spain, UK and USA.
During the past three decades I attended 91 of the 93 PSRC committee meetings where I was fortunate to learn from some of the best protection engineers in the world. Whether you are a young engineer trying to learn basics of power system protection and control or an experience protection engineer interested in enhancing your knowledge and contributing to the development of standards, PSRC committee is the right place.
Future Meetings:
- Jan 8-12, 2023, Jacksonville, FL
- May 8-11, 2023, Las Vegas, NV
- Sep 18-21, 2023, Myrtle Beach, SC, USA
Biography:
Dr. Murty V.V.S. Yalla presently serves as a Vice President and General Manager of Beckwith Electric business unit of Hubbell. Formerly he was president of Beckwith Electric Co. from 2005 to 2020. He is also the chair of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) Technical committee 95, Measuring Relays and Protection Equipment. He received BSEE and MSEE from India and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from University of New Brunswick, Canada. Dr. Yalla holds 7 US patents related to protection and control of power systems. He was elevated to the IEEE Fellow grade in 2006 and elected to the US National Academy of Engineering in 2021.
