Abstract:
This presentation will describe some of the activity that has taken place over a period of twelve years at the Real Time Power Systems Studies (RTPSS) Centre, located at the Durban University of Technology in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The RTPSS Centre is a facility that was established to foster collaborative study and research activity between various participating universities and industrial partners in South Africa. One of the aims in founding the RTPSS Centre has been to stimulate interest amongst undergraduate students in the area of power systems, in the face of competition from other sub-disciplines within electrical engineering that, to young engineers, are often more appealing because of their seemingly closer links to modern computer and information technology. Another aim in founding the RTPSS Centre has been to increase postgraduate research activity in the area of power systems. Finally, the electrical utility co-sponsoring the establishment of the Centre wanted to establish a facility where high-level application studies could be carried out by their engineers, in collaboration with specialist university staff and students.
The presentation will discuss how the simulators have made it possible for the university to offer final-year undergraduate students innovative and challenging hardware-based design projects in the areas of electrical protection, power system stability and control.
The aim of the presentation is to share with other university simulator users the kind of student projects (at both undergraduate and postgraduate level) that can be carried out using RTDS simulators, but also to share our experiences regarding how collaborative research activities with industrial companies can be used to stimulate and support university teaching and research activity.
Bruce Rigby • Durban University of Technology, etalumiSe (Pty)Ltd