VPS has been assisting AER Oman with protection systems incident investigations since 2009. In 2012 it became a concern to AER that an increasingly large number of protection errors and incidents were taking place, particularly in relation to commissioning activities on the primary distribution and transmission systems. There had been an increasing number of incidents which had given rise to unnecessary interruptions in supply to customers. In some cases, this resulted in depleted protection, with consequent severe implications for high cost system assets, safety of operators and also safety of the general public.

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VPS was engaged by AER to review all protection activities in Oman, both in the distribution network operators and the transmission company, make recommendations to improve the performance and reduce customer minutes lost and customer interruptions.

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The project identified a number of problems with the management of protection activities by sector companies and helped with the creation of staff development programmes and structures to secure improvements. Over the following years, VPS was called back by AER Oman to monitor the progress that was being made. The efforts resulted in a significant improvement of protection and power system reliability in the Oman electricity sector, with the work being used as an exemplar for other technical improvement initiatives in Oman.