Tim Walker brings 29 years’ experience in substation and protection & control design, operation, testing and instructing to his role as a Training & Application Engineer at OMICRON.

He has knowledge on Transmission digital protection & control schemes and check out. Tim developed scenarios that reinforce protection & control schemes for a simulated substation. He is a member of The American Society of Training and Development. He received his BSEET from Franklin University in Columbus, Ohio.

Meet Tim

OMICRON Academy: How long have you been in the industry and where did you work prior to OMICRON?

Tim Walker: I worked for American Electric for the Transmission Organization for 27 years. As a Training manager I helped to design and build a 45,000 square foot transmission training facility to train Substation Mechanics, Transmission Line Mechanics and Protection & Control Technicians/Field Engineers. The facilities housed a simulated indoor transmission line and substation. The substation was not able to be powered by primary voltages because of clearance and height restrictions of the building and electrical equipment. All of the lines and bus work was powered at 120 volts. Even at the lower voltage, all of the equipment and protection schemes functioned like a real substation and transmission line. Test circuits were created to simulate fault scenarios for the various substation equipment.

Prior to my time as a Training Manager I was in the field as a Protection and Control Technologist and worked in the substation engineering department designing and engineering substations. In the middle of my career at AEP I decided to try my hand as a contractor for two years. 

OA: What changes and trends do you see happening in Relay Protection?

Tim: Testing of protection systems is more than applying voltages and currents to a relay and watching an output close. Today’s field personnel need to understand how to manipulate voltages and currents to a protection scheme to achieve specific targets and outputs without re-mapping specific elements to a contact. Changing the functionality of a relay is not a recommended practice nowadays. If we do not verify that the settings are the same as when we first started the test, the relay may not perform as the Relay Engineer intended it to. This may result in an undesired operation of the protection scheme. The logic inside of a relay is just as important to a protection scheme as the protection elements.

Secondly, IEC61850 in protection schemes will be the next change that field personnel will have to know and learn how to manipulate for testing of protection schemes.  

OA: What makes the OMICRON Academy unique?

Tim: OMICRON Academy houses electrical equipment that allows learners to be able to use our test equipment to test different systems within a substation. This would include primary equipment such as transformers and circuit breakers as well as protection and control relays. This is the same equipment that would be found in substations today. Having the equipment housed indoors allows for a controlled environment that can be utilized year round.

OA: What is your favorite OMICRON Academy course to teach?

Tim: My primary focus is on secondary applications associated with protection schemes. I love to teach students about our test sets and how to apply them to testing protection schemes!