Monthly View - IEEE Power and Energy Society

Presented by: Vajira Pathirana, Chief Engineer, Teshmont Consultants LP; Pei Wang, Section Head- HVDC Planning, Manitoba Hydro; and Ramy Azar, CTO and VP-Eng, SNC-Lavalin

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This Webinar:

The webinar will present an introduction to the studies that will be performed during the planning phase of an HVDC system. Planning studies are usually required to determine the location of the converter stations, ac voltages of the connecting substations, power rating and voltage rating, overload requirements, reactive power requirements, performance requirements, operating modes and configuration of the HVDC system.

The webinar discusses the process, criteria and studies to be considered during the planning stage for developing a proper specification and successfully integrating the HVDC scheme into the electrical network. Attendees will understand the reasons for performing studies, a planning engineer’s perspective of the technical issues that must be considered, criteria that must be followed during planning phase, applications to be considered, technology aspects, reliability indices, control strategies, simulation tools for planning studies and lessons learned from a few HVDC case studies.

The Presenters:

Vajira Pathirana has been with Teshmont Consultants since 2004, where he currently serves as the Chief Engineer of the company. He has over 20 years of experience in planning, designing, specification, construction and commissioning of high voltage transmission systems including HVDC systems. His experience also covers power system protection, power system modeling, electromagnetic transient simulation studies, and project planning and coordination. He received his B.SC. degree in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering from the University of Moratuwa in 1996 and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Manitoba in 2004. Vajira is an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Manitoba.

Pei Wang has over 20 years of experience in power system planning, design and operations, and joined Manitoba Hydro in 2008. He is currently the Section Head of HVDC Planning Group responsible for the overall planning of three-bipole Nelson River HVDC system. Pei received his B.Sc.(EE) degree from Xi’an Jiaotong University in 1995 and M.Sc. degree from the University of Manitoba in 2000. He is a senior member of IEEE, member of CIGRE working groups A3/B4.34, C4/B4.38 and B4.74 with over 30 publications. Pei is a registered professional engineer in the province of Manitoba.

Ramy Azar brings 20 years of versatile power expertise as VP-Engineering and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for SNC-Lavalin’s Clean Power sector. In his CTO role for Power Grids, he is responsible for the innovation and engineering excellence for a group of close to 200 engineers spread over multiple offices internationally. His group executes North American and International projects in the high voltage sector including transmission lines and substations, HVDC converters and FACTs at voltages up to 765kV AC and +/- 500kV HVDC. Ramy holds a Ph.D. and M.Phil in Electrical Engineering from Cambridge University (U.K.), as well as a Bachelors in Hs Electrical Engineering from McGill University (Canada). Ramy is an Engineer registered in the Province of Quebec and Senior Member of the IEEE. He sits on various CIGRÉ Study committees related to HVDC.