Fault calculation tool brings system responses to view [power networks]

There are many computer programs available to perform comprehensive load flow and fault analyses of large and small power systems. When a protection engineer is using such a program, it is usually to obtain specific data required for an active project. Often, there is no time to examine the power system response to varying fault parameters. Intuition for visualizing the power system response to a range of disturbances, connections and varying locations was acquired in school and when there was more time to experiment. The highly visual program featured in this article is intended to encourage practicing protection engineers and students of power system disturbances to revisit the fundamentals through a series of predefined small system configurations. An intuitive and easy to use set of functions allows the user to control the system configuration, transformer connections, apply multiple fault types with settable impedances and view the results in relocatable and resizable windows with a choice of rectangular, polar, phase or symmetrical components format. The file saving option makes future reference to common cases easy and fast, thereby contributing to sharper intuition on the behaviour of faulted power systems.