Teaching Protection of Transmission Lines Fed by IBRs in Electrical Engineering Labs

This paper presents a practical teaching platform for understanding inverter-based resources (IBRs) in engineering courses and laboratory settings. This paper provides students with hands-on experience in setting transmission system protection, specifically focusing on examining the response of Mho distance protection in lines fed by IBRs. The laboratory setup consists of a real-time digital simulator, a digital relay for physical testing, and an electromagnetic transient (EMT) program power system model consisting of a transmission line integrating a photovoltaic farm with an transmission system. The voltage and current signals from fault studies performed using the EMT program are exported as COMTRADE files for playback tests in commercial protective relays. Students must configure the digital relay based on the system's parameters and analyze the Mho distance protection performance through the real device response and software to visualize the relay event file. Students will be able to use multiple protection functions and evaluate which protection and supervisory elements are impacted by the IBR. The students also compare IBRs with fault response compliant with IEEE 2800-2022 to ones that are not compliant. Through these experiments, students will gain an understanding of protection challenges associated with protection in IBR-penetrated systems, bridging theoretical concepts with practical implementation.