The 47th annual Western Protective Relay Conference was scheduled for 19 – 22 October 2020 at the Spokane Convention Center in Spokane, Washington, USA. However, due to the pandemic the 2020 conference organized by Washington State University was held virtually on the Microsoft Teams platform. The participant had access to all sessions, but an additional benefit was to be able to have digital access to the conference presentations and papers after the event.
The 2020 program was focused on the latest technologies in power system protection and the experience from their recent applications in the field organized in 10 paper sessions and 9 fundamentals sessions. The papers covered everything from the new communications technologies and standards, such as IEC 61850 to the latest applications like traveling waves-based protection. The presentations covered a wide range of traditional topics such as the traditional generation, transmission and distribution protection, as well as the new developments related to distributed generation and microgrids.
One of the benefits of a virtual conference organized as an educational forum for specialists is that because there is no need to travel it attracted participants not only from the United States and North America, but also from other countries from around the world.
