Teaching reliability assessment of smart grid protection systems

Today's power grids are continuously changing and becoming smarter. Intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) supported by complex peer-to-peer communication systems are major assets in smart grid platforms. Engineers and technicians are required to keep their knowledge up to date. Electrical engineering schools should take responsibility for offering up-to-date curricula to help ensure that engineers and technicians have current knowledge about new trends in power grids. This paper presents a teaching technique to introduce reliability assessment for several smart grid technologies for engineers and technicians. Event tree analysis (ETA) is used to present these technologies, and its application to various protection schemes is described.