Abstract:

Electrical power engineering is one the vital majors in higher educational system in Jordan. Power engineers are responsible for the establishment, operation and maintenance of the national power grid in addition to the interconnection with the neighboring countries. The laboratory of power systems is one of the most decisive laboratories in this major. In some institutions, this laboratory is computer-based without any physical components while in others it is based on small-scale separate physical components. The most modern electrical power system laboratory is an interconnected simulator composed of low-power generating units, different types of transformers, busbars, overhead transmission lines, cables and different types of static and dynamic loads in addition to the protection systems of the individual components and the overall system. The diversity of this laboratory depends mainly on the allocated budget. Thus, modern comprehensive power system laboratory may only be found at very few universities throughout the Middle East. The electrical power system laboratory is fourth year senior electrical engineering laboratory course at Tafila Technical University as well as other similar programs in a number of universities in Jordan. The laboratory draws on and correlates with the knowledge obtained by students from their sophomore electrical engineering courses such as electric circuits and power systems. Usually, all of the laboratory experiments in this course were based on traditional equipment, devices, methods and techniques for measurements, data recording and result analysis. This typically makes experiments time consuming and inefficient, and therefore, greatly limits the effectiveness in the students’ understanding of fundamental concepts and theories from the hands on experimentation. A pilot project is currently underway at the Department of Electrical Engineering, of Tafila Technical University, to implement remote experiments using its comprehensive TERCO power system laboratory. This laboratory is composed of different interconnected cubicles such as the power plant module with high voltage busbars and outgoing lines, transmission lines and distribution module, receiving substation module with high voltage side and load module. We present a prototype of a remote laboratory to conduct electrical power experiments over the internet has been developed to allow students to access the setup and perform measurement and analysis of typical electrical power experiments. The main goal of this work is to provide a mean of resource sharing of expensive power equipment to students from other universities in Jordan and beyond in addition to students at Tafila Technical University, where the traditional electrical power systems laboratory is located. The design approach is based on modifying the existing traditional systems to facilitate remote access via the web. One typical experiment addressing synchronization procedure of two generators has been performed with a power system simulator. The data acquisition system and remote access of the power laboratory were designed based on the LabView programming language. Initial on students’ evaluation of the proposed online laboratory indicates that encouraging results may be obtained with remote experimentation when improved pedagogical aspects are integrated properly in the measurement procedures.

Keywords:

remote experiments, power engineering, engineering education.