Ir Prof Eddie Lock, Deputy/Acting Chairman of the CA Division, was invited to meet young and potential professionals at the Smart Grid Operation Centre (SGOC) at Waterfront Annex of the Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education (IVE) (Haking Wong) by Mr Tommy Cheung, VTC Course Leader of Applied Learning (Electrical & Energy Engineering) on 6 August 2022.
Mr Cheung and Mr Tony Wong, Deputy Centre Manager of SGOC, and the students accompanied Ir Prof Lock for a tour of the SGOC and introduced their students’ projects. Mr Wong briefed the group on the SGOC facilities and addressed the future development of the smart grid.
Miss Kitty Chan, a team member of the SGOC and a graduate of the Higher Diploma in Electrical Engineering, elaborated on her smart meter application project for Outage Management Systems (OMS) with fault location algorithms using Real-time Digital Simulators (RTDS).
She mentioned that outage management of distribution networks was an important power system application as it could deliver immediate benefits from the large-scale rollout of smart meters. She explained that an outage identification method based on topology analysis and smart meter information had been developed.
She explained that “last gasp” messages were like customer calls. When the smart meter received a “last gasp” message, it could deliver prior knowledge of a potential outage. She conducted a case study with a related power network model of a village.
Ir Prof Lock was impressed by Miss Chan’s presentation. He also shared his views on the development of the smart grid with the students. The course has a significant contribution to the young, potential automation professionals.
As Miss Chan is the awardee of the Alistair Harvey Foundation Scholarship, she is going to study her BEng (Hons) in Electrical Engineering at the University of Sheffield in the coming months. Ir Prof Lock gave Miss Chan his advice on her career development and shared his work experience with the teaching staff and students, with examples from some projects at Heathrow. He encouraged the students to be industrious during their tertiary education and join the engineering profession as early as possible.