Case Study: Petronas improves protection and selectivity for RAPID with ETAP

Petronas unifies 5,000-bus RAPID protection studies with ETAP

Petronas, Malaysia's national oil and gas company, faced a significant challenge ensuring protection and selectivity for the massive RAPID project. The primary difficulty was consolidating over 20 separate ETAP models from different contractors into a single, coherent 5000-bus digital twin of the complex electrical system. A key technical concern was the risk of sympathetic tripping on healthy 275 kV feeders due to circulating earth currents during faults, an issue not detectable with conventional time-current curve reviews.

Using ETAP's PD Sequence-of-Operation tool, Petronas simulated faults to reveal hidden sympathetic relay operations, identifying circulating currents greater than 1 p.u. This analysis from ETAP led to the development of new corporate protection guidelines. The solution significantly improved system reliability by mitigating the risk of widespread outages, ensuring the safe and selective operation of Malaysia's largest integrated oil and gas complex.

Petronas