SEL wide-area situational awareness (WASA) systems provide operators and engineers the right information at the right time for efficient operation and analysis of the power system.
In 2002, SEL began incorporating synchrophasor technology into protective relays at no charge because of the belief that synchrophasors would become a critical component of the protection, control, and monitoring of the power system. Since then, SEL has continued to innovate, develop, and deploy synchrophasor applications around the world. Learn how a U.S. utility worked with SEL to develop advanced WASA software that leverages synchrophasors and other high-resolution data.
Real-Time Monitoring
Improve visibility and understanding of the power system with time-synchronized power system measurements. Understand system stress by viewing power flows and angle differences across your entire system, and detect transient behavior that is not detected with traditional SCADA systems.
Power System Model Validation
Record the system response of generator trips, load shedding, remedial action scheme (RAS) operations, or other events. Analyze the archived system responses, and compare them to power system models. Simply export system response data to external power system simulation/modeling applications.
Disturbance Monitoring
Analyze archived synchrophasor data and relay event reports together in one display for a complete disturbance monitoring solution. Easily find system disturbances and export data to CSV and COMTRADE data formats for PRC-002-2 compliance.
Renewable Energy Monitoring
Understand how the increasing amount of renewable energy being added to your grid impacts system stability, and detect new oscillatory modes that may be inadvertently introduced. System dynamics from these generation sources change quickly—too fast to see at traditional SCADA rates. Use high-resolution displays for detection and tracking of the impact of renewables on your system.
Synchrophasors Vs. Traditional SCADA
Traditional SCADA measurements update operators in the best case about once per second. More commonly, an update is provided every three to four seconds. The integration of renewable energy on the power grid is changing the fundamental operation of the power grid by inducing fast dynamics that go undetected at SCADA measurement data rates. Synchrophasors are a time-synchronized measurement that continuously streams out from the measurement device at data rates between 30 and 60 messages/second. This continuous update provides real-time and post-event visibility into the effects of these new system dynamics.
Scalable Solution
The SEL WASA solution easily transitions from a local pilot setup to a system-wide deployment. Start small with locations where the communications network and synchrophasor-enabled devices are already in place. Most SEL relays include synchrophasor capability as a standard feature. As applications and need for the data grows, expand to additional locations for a more complete picture of your power system.
Turn Protective Relays Into PMUs
Most SEL relays have synchrophasor capability built in, thus significantly reducing the cost of implementing wide-area protection and situational awareness. The processing of synchrophasor data in the protective relay is isolated from the processing of the relay’s protection functions, ensuring that the critical protection of the power system is not affected by turning on the PMU functionality in the relay. Utilities around the world are leveraging SEL protection relays to provide streaming synchrophasor measurements. Will your utility be next?
WASA Architecture
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