A team from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the College of Engineering upgraded the electrical power network simulator located in the Smart Network and Protection Laboratory by adding advanced devices to the network, as part of a research project program funded by the university that is partially sponsoring this project, in addition to the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation -Scientific Research Council-
Regarding this, Dr. Abdelsalam Mohamad El-Haffar, Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the College of Engineering, said: “To achieve the mission and vision of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, one of the department’s goals is to provide continuing education and disseminate engineering knowledge through conferences, short courses, workshops, consultations, and seminars. Recently, the Electrical Power Laboratory was developed with the latest protection devices for generators, transformers, and electrical cables in order to provide and disseminate engineering knowledge through the university.

He added in the same regard that in the first phase of the project, the old components of the electrical power network system were dismantled, such as: protection devices for generators and electrical transformers, protection of feeders and electrical lines, and the international synchronization unit.
As for the second phase, which was funded by the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation -Scientific Research Council-, the Real-time Digital Simulator System (RTDS) was installed and linked to the protection devices in the College of Engineering. This connection enabled all events related to the simulated electrical network to be represented at each location within a central server to represent a larger smart network.

Dr. Al-Haffar added that the current phase of the project will include employing wide-area protection algorithms that enable the provision of safe and reliable energy. When this phase is completed, students and researchers will be able to simulate various events, faults and monitor the network’s protection and control systems. 

In addition to modernizing the smart grid laboratory, many practical experiments were added to the power generation, transmission and distribution system laboratory, which was funded by the electricity sector. The laboratory is equipped with additional portable test sets to provide hands-on training to engineers on realistic substation commissioning and testing and prepare the trainees for electrical authorization certificates.