The complexity of realistic power systems makes necessary the use of computational tools to carry out reliability analysis. Electrical engineers must be able to develop and use these computational tools for the planning and operation of such systems. On the basis of active teaching methodologies, this paper proposes two practical activities in which the students will elaborate their own programming code to solve two basic problems related to power system operations, namely the power flow problem and the fault analysis. The power flow problem constitutes the initial step in the understanding of the power system operation. The first proposed activity includes the use of a commercial power systems simulator, together with the implementation of iterative algorithms in a programming software to solve the power flow problem. The use of the commercial simulator increases the autonomy of the students in the implementation of the mathematical algorithm since the simulator allows them to know the actual solution of the problem in advance. Once this activity is accomplished, students should be able to carry out the second proposed activity, which is related to the fault analysis. In this second activity, students will have to implement different fault analysis procedures (e.g., Thevenin and matrix methods) and compare the obtained results with those given by the commercial simulator. The objective of the proposed activities is twofold: first, better understanding of the operation of realistic power systems, which is very important for electrical engineers; and second, the writing of their own codes to solve these kinds of problems encourages students to develop programming skills.
