Smart Grid Operations and Control Training Course (Online / Remote)
1Summary
Power outages don't just inconvenience households — they disrupt hospitals, factories, and entire economies. As electricity networks grow more complex and pull in renewable sources, keeping them stable and efficient takes a very different set of skills than running a traditional grid.
This Arab British Fellowship Training Academy course is built around that shift. It equips engineers and utility professionals to operate, monitor, and control smart grids in real time — rerouting power during faults, integrating solar and wind generation, and coordinating between operators, suppliers, and consumers.
Participants also examine how countries such as China, Brazil, and India are scaling smart grid adoption to cut energy losses, improve reliability, and manage peak demand more intelligently.
2Objectives and target group
What You'll Gain
- The ability to manage power consumption and load control accurately enough to avoid outages.
- Skills to plan demand-response procedures and distribute energy loads across available generators.
- An understanding of how smart grid operation helps consumers cut costs and even generate their own electricity.
- Insight into how greater home-grown electricity generation strengthens national energy security and resilience.
Who Should Attend
- Professionals in the electric industry, electric vehicles, and charging-point installation.
- Staff at electric utilities and in the renewable and sustainable energy sectors.
- Transmission and distribution system operators, and electric planners.
- Energy workers in governmental utilities and power generation sites.
3Course Content
Module 1: From Traditional to Smart Power Grids
- Traditional grid components — power plants, switchgears, transmission lines, transformers — and the growing role of SCADA.
- Core power-system concepts: per-unit systems, power factor, and active, reactive, and apparent power.
- How smart grids add distributed generation, smart meters, and ICT-based communication on top of traditional infrastructure.
Module 2: Smart Grid Components and Distributed Energy Resources
- Distributed generation and distributed energy resources, including renewable sources such as solar PV, wind, fuel cells, and battery storage.
- Power electronics: smart, micro, and bidirectional inverters, voltage source converters, and HVDC systems.
- Pricing, communication, and restoration topologies within smart and micro grids.
Module 3: Smart Grid Operators and Market Structure
- The role of energy management systems (EMS) and SCADA in day-to-day operation.
- Operation planning, load forecasting, and independent system operators.
- Responsibilities of transmission and distribution operators, and the market structure of smart grids.
Module 4: Control Strategies for Smart Grids
- Load-frequency control, automatic generation control, and network topology and state estimation.
- Economic dispatch, load management, and operating-reserve calculations.
- Control of renewable sources and storage — solar panels, wind farms (DFIG), HVDC, and batteries — using droop and PWM-based techniques.
Module 5: Real-Time Operation of Smart Grids
- Voltage support, frequency compensation, and demand-response events.
- Restoration topologies, economic dispatch, and state estimation during live operation.
- Communication interactions, data loss and delay challenges, and system protection standards such as IEC 61850.
Module 6: Energy Management Systems in Practice
- What an energy management system is, why it's needed, and its components across generation, transmission, and distribution.
- Real-time SCADA applications, data acquisition, data historians, and monitoring and control sequences.
- Cost of generation, open-access transmission, and future developments in economic operation.
Module 7: Smart Grid Security and Resilience
- Core domains of a smart grid: markets, operations, service providers, and customers.
- Communication networks — HAN, WAN, wired, wireless, and Bluetooth — and their vulnerabilities.
- Key risks: confidentiality and data-integrity breaches, physical security, and IP security issues.