Few universities or schools offer power system majors, even though power system protection is a complex subject and crucial to our power grid. According to Jay Gosalia, most power systems experts are baby boomers who are approaching the age of retirement. Utilities are now struggling with the newcomers who do not have a strong foundation or the right background in power system protection, Gosalia said.

“So it is vitally important and our responsibility to society to make sure we leave our power system maintenance in good hands,” Gosalia said. “We do that by passing along the knowledge we have learned over the course of our careers.”

Gosalia is vice president of market solutions at Doble Engineering Co. and is working to educate young engineers to maintain power systems. He is presenting a session on transmission line protection during Doble’s 2011 Protective Relay Seminar in Lake Buena Vista, Florida from Aug. 23-25. The seminar is three days of in-depth training covering all aspects of the design, manufacturing and application of protective relays. The agenda will cover major protection themes including General Protection Knowledge, Distribution Protection, Substation Protection and Transmission Protection.

Gosalia’s part will take participants to the basics and help them understand how line protection makes the fast and accurate decisions under complex power system events. During this session, lots of questions will be answered on how line protection works.

“Most of us know how to work with the line protection, but may not know how the line protection makes the decision to trip or not trip during a power system disturbance,” he said. “Thanks to the latest digital technology, line protection is becoming so smart, yet at the same time quite complicated to understand.”

Gosalia’s early career was spent testing complete line protection as an application engineer. He said that it was a mystery how the protection made the decision to trip when tested with the test kit supplied by the line protection manufacturer. All of his questions were answered when he was introduced to a Doble test kit in the 80s.

It then became his job to convince the utility engineer on how to set and test the relays. He used the Doble test kit to train them on how to test the complex relays. He brings that initial experience that turned into 25 years dedicated to the development and marketing of protective relays to his training sessions. Before he joined Doble Engineering, Gosalia was the U.S. sales and marketing manager at GEC Alsthom T&D, Protection & Control Division for 13 years. Jay also worked at ABB in the Circuit Breaker Division as a design and development engineer.

Before starting his career, Gosalia said power system analysis was the subject that he liked when he was working on his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering. “The simple definition I knew at that time was that relays are smart fuse. That made me curious and when I studied the same principles at school, I thought this is an area I enjoy and this is the field where I want to work.” He later completed his masters’ degree in computer science.

Now Gosalia has also presented sessions on application criteria of distribution protection and different application philosophies on distribution protection. He has also presented on transient, dynamic and end to end testing of the line protection.

He communicates to students that to do their jobs well, they need to completely understand what they are doing and do the job in an optimal way. “Never take anybody’s words for granted. Application and testing of the protection is very important for the reliability of the complete power system,” Gosalia said. “That’s why when you test the protection, make sure you test it under power system condition or analyze the relay performance by simulating power system event.”

Gosalia enjoys talking to engineers and techs about how to test different relays and how they can use the power of computers to easily test the complex relays. Now, the computer does most of the work and tests the protection in meaningful ways. But he reminds them that as we “embrace new technology there is a danger that we forget the core principal behind protection of the power system. We like to build big castles but at the same time need to remember that big castles need a strong foundation - so understanding the basic philosophy is the key to build a bigger and better future.”

He also enjoys reading articles on power system protection in his spare time to keep up to date on the newer and upcoming technology. “In this digital age, change is the routine and you need to embrace new technology. Thanks to the digital technology we have come a long way - and it’s still changing. “