John D. McDonald (IEEE PES Past President) with graduate students and Prof. Rama Gokaraju when he visited the Real-Time Power Systems Simulation Lab in June, 2015.
The Real-Time Power System Laboratory is part of the Power Systems Research Group in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan was started by Prof. Ramakrishna Gokaraju in 2005. It was funded from an NSERC Discovery Grant, an NSERC Research Tools & Instruments (RTI) Grant, and a University of Saskatchewan Startup Capital Equipment Grant. It was upgraded in April 2012 with the Canada Foundation for Innovation John R. Evans Leaders Opportunity Fund (JELF). RTDS Technologies provided significant in-kind contributions to develop the RTDS facility. The Canadian Microelectronics Corporation (CMC) has provided hardware (FPGA boards) for Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation studies. The GE Digital Energy and Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories have provided their numerical relays for research and development work.
Among graduate students who worked in this lab, fifteen of them are working for major Canadian electric utilities such as Saskatchewan Power Corporation, BC Hydro, and ATCO Electric. Three of the former students (Shane Jin, Donald Fentie and Nripesh Ayer) work for major technology companies: the RTDS Technologies, Winnipeg, Canada, the Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, Pullman, U.S.A., and the OPAL-RT Technologies, Montreal, Canada. Two of the former students (Dr. Sumit Paudyal who did MSc studies at USASK, and Dr. Upendar Jalla, Visiting PhD student from IIT Roorkee) are now faculty members at the Florida International University, Miami, U.S.A., and the Osmania University, Hyderabad, India. One of the former PhD student (Dr. Bikash Poudel) is working as a Post-Doctoral Research Engineer for the Idaho National Laboratories (Nuclear Science & Technology Lab), Idaho Falls, USA.
Research
The electric power grid is undergoing rapid modernization in terms of its operation. Communications and electronic hardware technologies are playing a major role in facilitating the realization of the modern grid. Our research program deals with protection and control of the large power systems and renewable energy systems (e.g. wind and solar power) and uses real-time measurements, electromagnetic simulations, and practical testing and verification using hardware-in-the-loop simulations.
Our research has developed new methods and prototypes for power systems protective relaying and control, such as real-time transient stability prediction/out-of-step protection using state plane analysis, high-speed digital relaying using sub-cycle algorithms, and adaptive control of power systems. We have also done a practical implementation of these developed techniques using state-of-the-art communication technologies (IEC 61850, PMU protocols) and hardware implementation using Digital Signal Processing boards and low latency electronics hardware such as field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and testing using hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulations.
Graduate Students & Profs. Billinton, Rama Gokaraju. Dr. Vijayakumar Krishnasamy of National Institue of Technology, Jaipur, India gave a talk in October of 2018.
