Model Based Design for Power Systems Protection Relays, Using Matlab & Simulink

In the world of power system relays, there have been significant changes in the technology used to implement the protection; electro-mechanical relays, static relays, digital relays and numerical relays have all been developed to provide the required protection and control. However, the development process for these has by and large remained a manual, document led process. This inevitably leads to delays, interpretation errors and omissions which are often not identified until late in the process - when it is time consuming and expensive to change the design. Furthermore, the design has to be verified and validated from requirements through to the final implementation. Manual processes make this a laborious and thankless task. By utilising the powerful and flexible model based design process allowed by MATLABreg & Simulinkreg, this paper will show how complex and innovative new working methods can be developed to improve the design cycle. These will allow rapid modeling and testing of algorithms, before committing to the expense of development for the final hardware platform, and the resulting cost benefits achieved by avoiding late changes to the design. Meanwhile, consistent behaviour can be confirmed and demonstrated at all stages.