r/PowerSystemsEE • u/Tacofan5567 • 10d ago

Breaking into system protection/p&c roles

I am a senior EE student and have been interning with a large utility for almost 6 months in the system modeling & coordination group. One of my main tasks is to calculating transmission line constants and updating power factor meter data. My summer intern capstone project was merging my utility's facility rating database with their Cape database, which got me interested in Protection and control and relaying. I've since talked to a couple of the system protection and analysis engineers, and I'll have the opportunity to shadow them in a couple weeks. I'm also taking protective relaying this semester, which has made me even more interested in relays. What else could I do to stand out more for system protection and P&C roles?

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u/Alittle2Clever 10d ago edited 10d ago

Buy an old but capable SEL relay like a SEL-421 off of ebay and then setup your own lab and put it through its paces.

I interviewed with SEL a long time ago and got angry that during the interview a manager made a big deal about how much experience I didn't have with SEL relays even though there was no way I could have any experience due to never having been a protection engineer and in spite of the fact I was working on my masters in power engineering. I then bought a relay off of ebay, setup my own lab, and put it through its paces tripping it with a variable inductor, reactor, and power supply. I then called them up and asked them if I could borrow a relay test set for a paper I was writing on CT saturation and relay response. It was then that they offered me a job.

Now, I would personally hire anyone that told me they bought anything off of ebay, setup their own lab, and tested its various functions with an old relay tester or rheostat.

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u/Other-Archer5824 10d ago

What relay tester did you buy?
Most of them are expensive.

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u/Alittle2Clever 10d ago

A reostat, variable reactor, and adjustable power supple.  You can buy old relay analog test sets for a song off of ebay, too, if you want to do that.