I have been involved in all levels of utility planning including providing written feasibility reports on the control and protection of planned lines, transformers, capacitor banks, and other substation improvements. I provided impedance calculations for input into load and fault calculation programs and have worked on SPS implementations.
Down at the industrial/commercial level I have reviewed the protection and control designs for electrical services at voltages from 138KV down to 13.8 KV, including ungrounded delta service provided for underground mines. Assisted with reliability analysis for nuclear plant switchgear arrangements and electrical replacements associated with plant Life Extension and Modernization efforts.
(RANT: I have been a member of IEEE since I was an undergraduate, but sometimes they do do stuff that annoys the heck out of me. One of them has been the recent name change of the PES from the Power Engineering Society to the Power & Energy Society. What are they thinking? Or, since power is just energy divided by time making the name redundant, should I say "What thoughts are they thinking?" It seems related to the generational angst that seems to infect the IEEE web site. They try so hard to make engineering seem "relevant" with stories about building robots to explore rain forests, or installing weather instrumentation on the South Pole. I guess since ENGINEERING mostly involves sitting at a desk in an office, it just isn't cool enough for the younger generations. END OF RANT)
I have been involved in the compilation and analysis of fault data for use in validation of transient analysis and DC rise fault studies. I was involved in the testing and early adoption of PC software for calculating distribution level load flows and coordinating branch fuse selection with TOC relays.
I have extensive experience with grounding, shielding and surge protection for substations, plants, data centers and process control. I have participated in harmonics measurement as part of VFD site acceptance testing.
Over the course of my career, as instrumentation for testing and measuring surges has improved, I have been part of the shift towards isolation and separation as the best means of preventing surge related misoperations and equipment damage. When electronics was introduced into utility environments assumptions were made that induced currents could be mitigated via Faraday shielding. The idea was to enclose your equipment in a highly conductive shield where a varying magnetic field induces a canceling current. Early EHV substation designs called for grounding cable shields at both ends, and even grounding spare conductors in cables at both ends. In some cases the ground mat was extended up into a heavy 4/0 cable run inside instrumentation cable trenches. All these measures caused tremendous problems as the grounded conductors resulted in loop currents and ground fault currents flowing adjacent to instrumentation conductors and into equipment racks. I was involved with design changes to bury the ground mats DEEPER, isolate control, PT/CT and power conductors, grounding cable shields at one end and separating/taping remote shields and all spare conductors.
Also, it was not immediately realized that the DC control buses were often the cause of solid state equipment misoperation and failures. The high inductance of breaker trip coils and relay coils generated high and sharp voltage spikes very much unlike the surges provided by early Surge Withstand Capability testers used to test vendor equipment. The fact that DC buses were ungrounded contributed to the problem. We tried reversed biased diodes in parallel to some large (GE HFA 125VDC) aux relays to control surges on the DC bus. As a test we then used a single board computer to pulse the relay once every two seconds. The diodes sometimes failed (exploded drawing a nice arc) fairly spectacularly. We were able to trace this to "ringing" in the control circuits when the relay coil was interrupted.
Based on an IEEE paper, I was involved in the construction of a fast transient generator utilizing a HV video flyback transformer and a spark gap (two carriage bolts) to generate the DC bus surges in a more consistent manner. (We called it the "Frankenstein Machine".)
In addition to computer system UPS specification, purchase and checkout, I have been involved in stationary battery testing and preventive maintenance monitoring projects.
I have performed reviews of site industrial co-generation protection and control. I have recently taken a vendor course on IEEE 1547 compliant packages to update my knowledge in this area.
I have performed economic analysis for the selection of alternative energy and efficiency improvements. I have been involved in the application of controls for Voltage and PF control, including FACTS installations.